Bengaluru has turned out to be one of the fastest-growing metropolitan cities in the country, a fact people from the city are proud of. However, I doubt one would’ve thought how much this is going to cost us in coming years.
Known to many as an IT hub, Bengaluru was also known as the ‘Garden City’ in the late 90s. There was no dearth of natural gardens and man-made tree parks in the city. If research is to be believed, around 65 percent of this green cover has been lost in the past 15 years. Additionally, Bengaluru once had a healthy population of leopards, wolves, jackal, elephants and of course, tigers, who were found wondering in the woods of Bannerghatta, Devarayanadurga, and Kolar. These are the stories I grew up hearing in a small town in the outskirts of Bengaluru.
I was introduced to wildlife in the 12th grade by my friend Sandeep. Our days would start by attending distress rescue calls of snakes and birds in and around Bengaluru with our senior rescuers from the BBMP forest cell. Right from day one, we had a special interest in the gentle giants, i.e. elephants, which led us straight to the hills of Savandurga.
In 2011, our explorations put us face to face with nine bull elephants – an exceptional case as it is unusual for male elephants to stick together as a group. Bengaluru was rapidly growing by then, and this lead the forest cover to denigrate into small fragmented forests. At some point elephants were forcibly pushed out of their homes into these smaller jungles.
Rowdy Ranga
In Savandurga, our days used to start by watching these elephants grazing peacefully. The forest department was working hard to keep the elephants away from the crops which they used to raid on a regular basis during night.
The group had a huge bull elephant called Ranga, later named ‘rowdy Ranga’ as he was seen aggressively leading the group to damage crops. He was also infamous for charging at people.
My very first face off with Ranga was dangerous and could have cost me my life. He was seen going to a farm early in the morning and we were assisting the forest department staff in tracking him. Moments later, we got a message confirming a elephant sighting. A loud trumpet call later, there Ranga was, charging at us. Luckily, I was pulled to a boulder and we managed to divert his attention to the other side.
Ranga was not sighted since that day. As elephant lovers we were terrified and thought he had vanished due to an apparent danger of death or poaching.
Days later, a news channel reported the first ever wild elephant sighting in one of the lakes in Chitradurga which turned out to be Ranga. Ranga had travelled around 200 kms! How did he pass through dangerous human settlements and national highways? We were but left curious at his intelligence.
In 2014, places like Savandurga among other important corridors were to be declared as elephant removal zones, and the first phase started when more then 40 forest department staff started searching for these bulls to push them towards Bannerghatta by bursting crackers and firing rubber bullets at them.
A wireless message reported a sighting of five elephants in the hills, and all the groups were diverted to search in that direction. A panic message soon after said elephants could be seen closer to the temple area. We were confused as it was impossible for these nine bulls to reach there so fast.
While on our way to identify these elephants, one charged at us – and it was none other than Ranga. By that time, Ranga had allegedly killed over 40 people, but he was just a wild elephant who was trying to stay at his home.
In mid 2014, Ranga was labelled as rogue, and consequently captured and translocated to Chamarajnagar forest division.
Extensive camera trapping revealed to us something unexpected – exactly three months later Ranga came back scaling almost 300kms from a unknown forest to his home range in Savandurga! We then began digging into their migration map.
As we learned from research, an elephant transfers all the maps of her travel to her offspring in the gestational period. Elephants, then, have better navigation skills than Google! They have a ready map of where to find food, water and seasonal crops to ride. This is what Ranga and those elephants wanted. Instead, they met with huge cities, roads, highways, traffic movement and the like.
An old incident in Bengaluru where a group of elephants appeared out of nowhere into the electronic city is the same example, and an unfortunate result of animals losing their habitats.
When politicians and officers were tired of this conflict, they introduced "elephant removal zones" which led to the capture of many elephants in Karnataka.
Sidda, another elephant in the pack, was tragically murdered by all of us, while Ranga had his destiny to die in a road accident almost 300kms away from his home range while in captivity. Other elephants are still facing these problems each and every second. People called them rogue elephants of Bengaluru because we made them go rogue by bursting crackers, firing gun shots at them.
Ranga and Sidda were fine example of humans cruelty and also a warning call to all of us. The man animal conflict is passé, the need of hour is to coexist with wildlife or else there will be no future. Ranga, Sidda and three other elephants have seen death in last few years – an injustice to our fellow living beings.
(Panish Bharadwaj us a Chief Naturalist at Bagh Villas, Kanha National Park, Madhya Pradesh. All 'My Report' branded stories are submitted by citizen journalists to The Quint. Though The Quint inquires into the claims/allegations from all parties before publishing, the report and the views expressed above are the citizen journalist's own. The Quint neither endorses, nor is responsible for the same.)
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