Elephants Trample Paddy, Betelnut, Bay Leaf Trees In Bengal

Elephants are nothing new to Lonkeshwar Ray, who lives in the village of Nodhabari in the northern Jalpaiguri district of West Bengal. “When a few animals make an appearance, many of us feel happy on sighting them. But the feeling does not last long when there are too many of them,” he says.

In Nodhabari and the 8-10 villages adjacent to it, elephant depredation is a major concern for farmers like Lonkeshwar Ray. They are forced to guard the crops all night, watching from makeshift structures like machans made of bamboo and wood and hoisted on trees, to provide them greater security.

The farmers here were paddy farmers, but many are now experimenting with tea. This is because elephants in a shrinking habitat often damage paddy fields. In Nodhabari, where there are about 250 households, often the farmers cannot sleep soundly. “When I fall asleep at night, there is no guarantee that I will see the sun rise the next day. Whenever I hear a sound, I immediately get up and light a torch,” says Ray. He started a tea garden here ten years ago.

His neighbour Subhaschandra Ray says that paddy cultivation requires intensive labour from start to finish. “We have to keep watch on the crop from machans. Still, when elephants enter the villages in search of food, they trample on the paddy fields, leading to extensive loss,” he explains.

Lonkeshwar explains the economics. “Per bigha (0.6 acres), farmers like me have to spend Rs 10,000-12,000 on paddy cultivation. But instead of 18 to 20 mons of paddy (a mon is 40 kilos), we get two to five mons yearly as the crop loss caused by elephants is high.” The paddy harvested from the fields is mainly stored for household use throughout the year. To tide over his losses, Lonkeshwar has started growing tea.

True to subsistence farming, he has created a small tea garden on a bigha of land, and there are also other smaller gardens all around. “After planting tea, the minimum waiting period is two years. The soil here is beneficial to tea,” he explains. Lonkeshwar Ray employs three to five labourers for plucking the tea leaves. Depending on the density, they pluck about 10 to 30kg of tea leaves every harvest.

In Jalpaiguri’s Diana forest range, which lies close to the border with Bhutan, forest ranger Ashes Paul says that the paddy season extends from August to November while the maize season is from April to June. “In both seasons, herds comprising 50-60 animals can be seen. The Bhutan foothills about four to five km away and where paddy is cultivated on a large scale, it attracts elephants and they often enter the tea gardens for crossing over.”

Posted here for about a year, Paul says he has worked in elephant-prone areas for a long while. He adds that elephant behaviour is changing. “I have noticed a transformation over the years. In Naxalbari, where I was once posted, the herds used to contain 120-150 elephants but here there are no more than 50 animals to a herd. I think the herds are splitting up to search for food more effectively.”

According to Namdev Yedage, who works for the Spenta Aid Foundation in this forest range, many people have stopped cultivating paddy and maize in the past 20 years to ward off elephants. Some areas have seen the growth of mustard farms and betel nut plantations, but the elephants now damage these as well.

In Kalikhola Basti, a village close to the range office where Ashes Paul sits, residents Shetu Subba and Shyam Tamang say that the solar-powered electric fencing installed to keep the elephants at bay isn’t foolproof. “At night we have to remain alert, especially in the monsoon. Once when elephants entered our village, a person was flung aside, leading to serious injury. The crop cover has been reduced to keep the elephants at bay,” says Tamang.

Also to counter the elephants, a few farmers here have planted betelnut trees. But such plantations also pose problems as sometimes the saplings are stolen, say Subba and Tamang, both of whom are members of the local Joint Forest Management Committee.

Another resident of Kalikhola Basti, Gopal Pradhan, has been experimenting with bay leaf crops for the past five-six years. “I sell the leaves to traders. Last year, I earned Rs 12,000.” Pradhan has about 400 bay leaf trees.

Small tea gardens remain the hot favourite, however. One such grower, Rajesh Roy, says he gets a good income from selling tea leaves. “Paddy used to bring in Rs 50,000 annually. In its place, tea ensures Rs two to three lakh a year.” It has been for about four years since he began growing tea in his village, Sipaipara.

Roy employs four labourers paying each of them Rs 200 a day to pluck the tea leaves. “In places where it is not possible to grow tea, some of us still carry out some amount of paddy cultivation,” he explains.

A new problem has arisen with the flourishing of these small tea gardens. Tea gardens created to ward off crop damage from elephant raids are giving rise to human-leopard conflict in turn. Leopards permanently reside inside the tea gardens where they also give birth to cubs. Workers in the big tea estates share that they are afraid of the leopards there.

Tersa Ekka works in the New Chumta tea garden near Sukna. “Leopards lift cattle and pigs. Once when I saw a leopard, I shouted loudly and the animal fled. The animals are spotted at night in the villages,” says Ekka, who has been working since she was 13 and is now 51.

Amrita Oraon, who works in the Nepuchapur tea garden in Jalpaiguri, was attacked by a leopard in April this year. The Indigenous woman shares she had to spend Rs 10,000 at the hospital for treatment. The attack happened when she was engaged in plucking leaves.

Shyama Prasad Pandey from SPOAR, a local non-profit, says that any data on land-use change is impossible to obtain as officially there is no such record. “After conversion of paddy lands for tea gardens, these became a safe haven for leopards. The animals and even their cubs started living in these areas. Overall, it has been a 40 to 50 percent change in land use. The soil here has always proved good for tea. There are many domestic tea gardens and the monsoon rain is sufficient for them.”

According to Aritra K Shettry, a conservation ecologist with more than a decade of studying and managing human-leopard conflict in northern Bengal, it is market dynamics coupled with the persistent risk of damage to paddy by elephants that has gradually led to the expansion of small tea planters in the districts of Darjeeling and Jalpaiguri.

“While tea fetches higher price compared to paddy, the vegetation cover accorded by tea and the easy availability of livestock near human settlements enable the colonisation of small tea gardens by leopards,” she explains.