Dangerous rare elephants pose conservation conundrum

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What happens when the neighbour from hell is an endangered species? Next month, scientists and elephant handlers will begin capturing 23 Asian elephants that are menacing the Hassan district of Karnataka, India – the first operation of its kind in 40 years. What the authorities plan to do next has upset conservationists.

The elephants have killed 46 people in the Hassan district, according to a 2012 report by the Karnataka Elephant Task Force. The animals, which also damage crops, live in tiny pockets of forest in an otherwise farmed area that is home to 200,000 people.

India's Wildlife Protection Act of 1972 makes it illegal to cull the elephants – they are listed as endangered on the IUCN Red List.

Moving the elephants to a new area is the best option, according to Marion Garaï of the Elephant Specialist Advisory Group based in South Africa.

The task force disagrees, saying that the elephants will simply return to their former territory. With its farmed crops, Hassan is the elephant equivalent of a supermarket, says Sukumar Raman of the Indian Institute of Science in Bangalore, who heads up the task force.

On his team's recommendations, the elephants will instead be trained and used by the forestry department for non-commercial purposes – the Wildlife Protection Act prohibits the use of captive elephants for commercial activities.

Garaï cannot support the move. "Only captive-born elephants can be used for captive purposes," she says.

Gay Bradshaw at the Kerulos Center in Jackson, Oregon, who established in 2005 that elephants can experience post-traumatic distress when their herds are broken up, agrees. "Neither eliminating entire herds nor consigning them to labour camps is a scientific or ethically acceptable solution," she says.