Driving down a forested lane: Elephants and other memories of the Garo Hills.

Driving down a forested lane: 

Elephants and other memories of the Garo Hills.

This piece is published in The State of Wildlife In Northeast India (1996 - 2011) : A Compilation of News from the Protected Area Update.

My bike stopped at the very place it used to then. I would either have to push it a little or kick-start it to reach the next turn from where Panda was downhill. Panda lies on the India – Bangladesh border in South Garo Hills and abuts the Baghmara Reserve Forest (BRF). As I drove on I relived moments from my three year (2004 - 2007) stint in the landscape; some of which I happily share below.

The Garo Hills Landscape

I was at Baghmara after a hiatus to review the efforts at Samrakshan and my only condition was that I would take a day off to drive around with a bike. Samrakshan Trust is based at Baghmara and works towards conserving biodiversity values in an equitable and just manner. The Garo hills along the India-Bangladesh border are comprised of 3 districts: West Garo Hills, East Garo Hills and South Garo Hills (of which Baghmara is the head-quarter), covering a total area of 8,197 sq km. Barring very small plots of government owned lands that have been designated as reserve forests, national parks or wildlife sanctuaries, the rest of the landscape is community owned. Governed under Schedule 6 of the Indian Constitution these villages (akings) continue to harbour and manage large patches of community forests that have helped maintain contiguity of the forest cover across most of the Garo Hills and are also home to a wide diversity of wild animals and plants. The vegetation types here include tropical evergreen forests, moist deciduous forests, secondary forests and bamboo forests. The biggest threats to the landscape come in the form of coal mining and conversion of natural vegetation patches to single crop plantations. 

Of Elephants and Bears

While driving downhill, shutting off the bike-engine makes a world of difference. Another world comes alive; unwanted noises are shown the door; birds and insects suddenly became audible and sweetly at that. This many-potholed, main road of the district is regularly crossed by elephants (Elephas maximus; Mongma) and there are many a turn on the road that I have often seen elephant dung. Elephants use slopes most favourable for movement and these are later used by humans - mongma ramas is how the elephant paths are locally referred to. The road I took snaked from Baghmara to Panda through the BRF – an interesting patch of green in the mosaic that constitutes the Garo Hills Elephant Reserve. This is what the report of the Elephant Task Force has to say of the Garo Hills Elephant Reserve: “spread over 3500 sq kms and supports approximately 1,700 elephants. However developmental activities and clearing of forest for shifting cultivation has resulted in degradation and fragmentation of habitat”. The landscape has always been known to have had good populations of the pachyderms. In the pre-independence period elephants were regularly captured here; P D Stracey notes in his book Elephant Gold, for instance, that 255 elephants were captured in just a three year period between 1911 and 1914 in these Garo hills. Interestingly elephant capture, here, was allowed till as late as 1982 with 171 elephants being captured in the 5 years preceding the ban that was enforced that year.

As I drove from Baghmara I crossed the Karvani aking to my left. It was here that a colleague and myself had got very excited on coming across fresh bear signs on the sand. Our discussion on the bear species had been cut short on hearing an elephant who had sounded too close for comfort. We had rushed back, exactly like one does when wild elephants are around! We had known already from our 2004 visit, to a village on the Baghmara - Tura road near Jatrakona, that bears regularly came to eat jackfruits! In his ‘Records of Sloth Bear and Malayan Sun Bear in North east India’, Anwaruddin Choudhury talks of the “Garo Hills being the western most range of the Sun bear (Helarctos malayanus; Mapil)”, but also “ that the presence of  Sloth bears (Melursus ursinus; Mapil sarang ) in Garo Hills needs confirmation!”

Driving further I crossed the point where I had my first sighting of the elephants in the landscape while with another colleague. Two of them stood at a slightly elevated position on our left. As we drove past, I dreadfully glanced towards the valley on the right that lazily went down to Bangladesh. We were able to drive further and relief we experienced was alive till only the moment we realized that we would have to return in a while by the very same route! Elephants used to cross over the international border and it once created quite a furore. A NGO based in Bangladesh demanded that the Indian government take back the 100 odd elephants that had crossed over. They had even argued for the elimination of the elephants; this was the price they would have to pay for attacks on people, and for destruction of trees, roads and houses. Anwaruddin Choudhury too reports this in his report on the impact of border fence along India-Bangladesh border on elephant movement. This point was also not very far from the point where I was first chased by an elephant. That incident in the wet darkness instilled in me a confidence in my bike driving abilities that I, rather immodestly, still hold on to. On that eventful day we were returning from Gongrot to report a case of elephant mortality to the forest department. During 2005 – 2007 we had reported 13 mortalities in the landscape to the authorities.

We had come across an elephant on the path that leads from Gongrot to Balpakram National Park (BNP). We saw it moaning and struggling to stay on its feet and as we wondered what lay ahead, it fell down with a thud. The moans increased - they were sad enough for us to feel some of the pain and realise of the helpless situation we were in. It died not much later. The mark on its body made us wonder if it had been killed with a spear. In their ‘Conservation of Asian Elephant in North east India’, Anwarruddin Choudhury and Vivek Menon note that “killing elephants with poisoned arrows and spears is still practiced, although with the easy availability of modern firearms such primitive methods survive only in some areas”. BNP, it must be noted is the largest protected area in the state and encompasses an amazingly beautiful canyon that is associated with local beliefs and myths. While an earlier management plan of the park notes of its being part of the first list of proposed tiger reserves during early 1970s; of its current management status – the lesser said the better.

Hunting, road building, tree felling

Driving on I reached the Pilot Project; a rubber plantation (located within the BRF) set-up as a pilot initiative and hence the name. Across the road from the plantation entrance is a path that leads down-hill to a stream. At this junction we had seen a hunter cross the road with a Barking deer (Muntiacus muntjak; Balgitchak) across his shoulders. We had decided to delay the evaluation of the self help groups that we had actually come for and drove instead to Baghmara to inform the forest department. At his office the Divisional Forest Officer said he was busy since the Conservator was visiting later that day. I recall being irritated during the brief discussion after which he reluctantly agreed to send the Range Forest Officer to the spot. The deer had been trapped using an old fishing net near the stream. It was here many months later that I had my first clear sighting of the Capped langur (Trachyithecus pileatus; Ranggol) when we had gone to bathe in a stream. In a questionnaire based survey focusing on large mammals we undertook in the landscape, 77% respondents stated that they had seen the animal.

Further down the road I was at one of the turns where a friend and me had driven late one night to see elephants. I recalled how after a few minutes of shared silence, at this point where darkness met more darkness, the forest had suddenly seemed full of life - we thought we heard elephants. In the dense growth, sighting them during the day in these forests was not an easy task, what to speak of the night; unless, of course, they wanted to be seen.  As I write I recall Rudyard Kipling in his ‘Toomai of the Elephants’; a young boy “who had seen what never man had seen before - the dance of the elephants at night and along in the heart of Garo Hills”.

Driving along I reached a point where a road was then freshly planned by the Border Security Force (BSF) – one that would connect the border road to the road I was then on. I had put in few afternoons in the silence here as I wondered on the need to have roads cutting the lovely forest. We had taken up the matter with the authorities at Shillong along with the other issue involving the BSF – cutting trees from BRF for use as firewood. It was not far from this point that an elephant had attacked a vehicle during the assembly elections. People had remarked that the elephant attacks were on account of increased activity in the area, resulting perhaps in greater stress for the animals. Later during the parliament elections several booths in Garo Hills were marked sensitive on account of presence of elephants in the vicinity! One can imagine what this can escalate to if the road construction and tree-felling goes on.

Further on, after crossing Ampangre, I reached the point where with people who knew of forest much better than I did, I had my first sighting of the  Slow Loris (Nycticebus bengalensis; Gilwe) in the wild. We observed one for a while and were pleasantly surprised when the 2^nd one appeared. We watched fascinated as that endearing creature clasped the teak branches and moved on slowly and gracefully. Only a few months earlier we had successfully helped release a Slow Loris from a family in Gongrot. We were very enthused initially on seeing it and began talking for its release in the village. However we seemed to be losing steam in our negotiations when I suddenly fell at the feet of the concerned person asking him to return it to its home. It surprisingly worked! Gongrot was one of the villages where we had in place an interesting participatory elephant monitoring program. People recorded information on the elephant presence in their villages and we would build on it further by collating and analysing information over a period of time.

Driving on further I reached the turn which signalled the downward slope to Panda and steered silently to the village. It here that I saw a house damaged by the elephants for the first time and also where the largest herds were then reported in the elephant monitoring program. Panda brings back memories of the quaint and dainty guest-house maintained by the Garo Hills Autonomous District Council and also of the initial days when the District Collector, who had offered me a lift, stopped his vehicle to hunt Wild pig (Sus scrofa; Wak burung)!

Baghmara memories also take me to the discussion I had with a colleague 8 years ago. He had asked if I was willing to move to Baghmara and I had replied that I knew nothing about that part of our country and little about elephants too. He had said he was willing to take the gamble if I was ready. Quite thankfully, I took the gamble, the gamble worked and it changed my life!

Review of the book by Dr. A J T Johnsingh in Frontline here. 

Both images are by Dr. M. D. Madhusudan ~ Many thanks. 
In the compilation sketches accompany the text. 
Many thanks to FES and Pankaj Sekhsaria.