This wild tusker made his way into the hattisar (elephant stable) last night next to where I'm based. We were sitting round the camp fire when we heard the commotion, that distinctive trumpeting of the great animal and earth moving thumps as he looked for food and then made amorous advances to one of the domestic elephants.
These things happen, they are part of living in or on the fringe of jungle and wild elephants come into conflict with humans often, every year people lose their lives and we all know that elephants are a species under threat as well.
We had to stand our ground to discourage him from wrecking the place but when he advanced we scurried, fast. Over the years I've had to make haste away from elephants, rhinos, tigers and leopards but never bears, the animal I am very wary of. When I was in the jungle with Asa, the young leopard and I would often come across fresh sign of Himalayan Black Bear, often footprints in snow. When Asa become overly cautious, particularly in thick bamboo, we would back off.
In this case I limited the flash on my camera, I always try to keep my impact to a minimum. I never go looking for wildlife as part of research, only their sign, if wildlife appears then so be it.
It's all about respect, balance. There will always be conflict, nature is beautiful but chaotic. We just have to keep learning about how we can live together with respect...
The presentation and meeting I told of in the previous posts has already produced some positive results. I'll talk more about this soon, so much to be done, it never stops really but for the tiny percentage of people who really value wildlife we know it's worth it. We have to grow that percentage so that the future of animals like the ghostly figure in the image is one of species survival, they have that right as much as we do.
Jai Bagh.
