Street Theatre Inspires Human-Elephant Coexistence

How do you reach a broad audience on a very difficult but important topic? In the southern part of India, near the Anamalai Wildlife Reserve, they are using street theatre to educate local community members of all ages on how to coexist with the elephants living nearby.

Community members of all ages gather to see & participate in street performances focused on Human-Elephant Coexistence

In March, 15 plays were performed for audiences in eight villages bordering on the reserve where human elephant conflict levels still remain at critical levels. In this part of India people and elephants constantly live in close proximity to each other, sometimes competing for the same resources. The professionally written and performed plays are designed to teach area inhabitants how to coexist peacefully with elephants by instructing them on elephant behavior, “do’s and don’ts” of elephant conflict and protecting oneself and family. Additionally, the plays provide new ways of teaching others in their community about the importance of elephants and elephant safety.

Street plays gather large crowds & teach about elephant behavior & how to peacefully coexist with elephants
 

In the state of Tamil Nadu, plays like these are quite popular and culturally relevant. It is hoped that through these performances, awareness can be brought to the possibility of human-elephant coexistence and attitudes towards elephants can be changed for the better!

Street plays such as this are a culturally relevant method to inform communities. They are professionally written & produced by experts dedicated to the protection of elephants & humans

Asian Elephant Support is delighted to have been able to support this creative and unique approach to conservation and we look forward to reporting more on this when programs for school children in the area take place later this year! Help ensure more information about how to safely coexist with elephants is brought to communities living in and around elephant habitat. Donate here.  

Sri Lankan Children Connect with Orphaned Elephants

July 2020 - AES would like to take you to Sri Lanka, where for over 4 years, we have worked closely with Dr. B. Vijitha Perera supporting the care of orphaned elephants at Elephant Transit Home (“At Athuru Sevana”) in Udawalawe National Park. Elephant Transit Home’s goal is to rehabilitate orphaned elephants and release them back into the wild at the age when they can care for themselves. In a country with approximately 6,000 wild elephants, Elephant Transit Home has taken in hundreds calves in the last 25 years. This is a challenging task, as these young elephants often come with serious nutritional deficiencies, disease and a host of other issues.

Previously, our funding for ETH has gone to monitoring the youngsters while in human care and then upon release. But our most recent partnership is centered on community partnership, specifically with school children.
 

Orphaned for a variety of reasons, as we see in almost every elephant range territory, Human Elephant Conflict is a major factor for these calves. In an effort to gain community support, Dr. Perera has written and distributed two books, which Asian Elephant Support is proud to have sponsored. One of which, A Cry for Milk - written in Sinhala and translated to English - talks about the reasons why calves are separated from their mothers, the extraordinary care given when these elephants come to Elephant Transit Home and the success stories this group has seen after the release of juveniles back into the wild and the joy of them finding new herds and having babies of their own.

Dr. Vijitha Perera with ETH staff

& Government Officials receiving the books

Sharing these stories with school children, cultivating a sense of concern for orphaned calves and understanding for lengths taken to save these babies, was the purpose behind A Cry for Milk. Sixty pages of information and photos from Elephant Transit Home’s amazing work, fills this book. Asian Elephant Support is so thankful for the opportunity to fund the effort to develop greater bonds between the next generation, both human and elephant. We hope you, our supporters, enjoy some of the photos from this wonderful book!

Asian EEHV Working Group

In November 2016, AES president Linda Reifschneider attended the second meeting of the Asian EEHV Working Group, a group of veterinarians, elephant managers, researchers, and mahouts who are committed to providing the best care possible for elephants.  In our February 2017 Newsletter we gave an overview of Elephant Endotheliotropic Herpesvirus (EEHV)  and its devastating impact on Asian elephants, especially young calves, worldwide.

However, we are Asian Elephant Support, and the meeting was an eye-opening but honest wakeup call about how very much needs to be done throughout the Asian range countries to prevent deaths due to EEHV.  There the largest number of Asian elephant calves is born and, tragically, many are dying without proper diagnosis of EEHV, much less the needed equipment, supplies, and training - not just of veterinarians but also of mahouts and owners – to enable them to both identify the disease and be able to initiate treatment in the very narrow window for possible survival.

Polymerase chain reaction (qPCR) machine

To this end, AES has made their first commitment of $3,000 to cover the airfare of six participants in a three-day training workshop at Kasetsart University in Thailand.  This laboratory is well-equipped and easily accessible to participants traveling internationally from the range countries.  The workshop will provide training in the molecular diagnostics of EEHV, as well as educating the attendees in sample collecting and planning for EEHV cases.

The second phase of this project is to support the travel of two or three of the participants from the first training workshop to additional Southeast Asian countries to implement secondary workshops for more wildlife health professionals.  This approach will increase the region’s capacity to continue providing training in EEHV diagnostic techniques, allowing for the training of others in their own labs.  To date, individuals from Kasetsart University (Thailand), National Trust for Nature Conservation (Nepal), and University of Peradeniya (Sri Lanka) are willing to serve as secondary trainers.  They plan on training a total of 15 additional researchers in ten labs in Asia to perform the molecular diagnostics for EEHV.

Laboratory equipment

Only 30,000 to 50,000 Asian elephants remain in the wild, scattered across fragmented habitats in 13 Asian countries.  EEHV is a significant threat to the survival of this vulnerable species.  The formation of the Asian EEHV Working Group together with the National Elephant Herpes Laboratory (NEHL) providing training, chemical reagents, and diagnostic equipment in Southeast Asia – with the collaborative support of AES and other organizations – is a critical step toward successfully confronting this disease in Asian range countries.  Make no mistake; it won’t be easy or quick.  But almost 100 cases have been confirmed in Asia to date, with many more deaths suspected but unconfirmed because of the difficulty of diagnosing EEHV in wild elephants and the lack of testing capacity in the range countries.    After accurate diagnosis in the lab comes training in the field, for owners and mahouts to be able to identify and respond in the small window this disease offers for possible survival.  

AES will continue to help with funding as applicable and possible.  To this end, any supporters who would want to make a gift to AES specifically toward this effort can note on their checks or PayPal donations “EEHV”.  Thank you!

Elephants on the Line - Bhutan and India

Mamatha

Part of the AES mission statement is “to increase awareness and offer support for human-elephant coexistence to help protect the needs and future of the Asian elephants”.  Over the past couple of years, AES has supported Mamatha Sathyanarayana,  a high school Biology teacher from Mysore, India.   Along with her teaching responsibilities, she is also involved with wildlife conservation. She facilitates workshops about wildlife co-existence (elephants, in particular)  for the local village children.  In October 2014 we had the opportunity to support Mamatha to attend and facilitate educational workshops in Bhutan. The North East India and Bhutan border is home to a sizable population of Asian elephants.  Elephants on the Line (EoL) is an organization that is collaborating between Bhutan, India and US partners to address the major human-elephant conflict issues in this area.   In 2014 the focus of EoL is the Udalguri District of Assam, India, which has one of the highest HEC rates in all of Asia. The following is Mamatha’s account of the workshops:

Elephants on the Line Education Workshops

Bhutan and Assam, India, October 2014

Role playing exercise

Elephants on the Line (EoL) is a trans-boundary, community based project that has been initiated to help local communities in Northern Assam and Southern Bhutan deal with human elephant conflict by providing awareness activities and encouraging villagers to voluntarily participate in conservation activities. From October 3-5, a two-day education workshop was held at the Royal Manas National Park in Bhutan. The workshop was organized by the EoL project and was attended by about 20 staff from the Bhutan Forest Department, as well as some volunteers from the Assam EoL project.

During the workshop there were presentations about the status of elephants in Bhutan and in Assam, elephant behavior, causes of Human-Elephant conflict (HEC), and addressing conflict through coexistence.  I led the workshop components that specifically addressed coexistence and used various activities to share information and engage participants.  The activities included having participants develop short dramas, participate in a role play situation, and learning how to use energizers to refocus participants’ attention and teach. While at the Park all participants also enjoyed an evening session about elephant husbandry and care with the camp elephants that are used to patrol the park.

Workshop participants

From Oct 6-8, a second workshop was held in Orang National Park, Assam (India).  The area affected is Udalguri District; there have been many human casualties from HEC as well as some elephant casualties in this region. In this workshop all of the participants were local villagers who are directly affected by HEC.  The workshop started with presentations about the causes of HEC, as well as the use of maps and GPS units to identify elephant habitat.  We also presented a few activities related to coexistence and the participants were very engaged. 

AES would like to thank Mamatha for her hard work for Asian elephants in India.  We are proud to support local people that are so dedicated to saving this amazing species and finding ways for elephants and humans to co-exist.