Unimaginable beasts, we humans are!

The inhumanity of the humans against the wildlife is a pan-Indian phenomenon. The number of elephants are decreasing in our country that venerates the elephant as God Ganesha or Vinayaka. In 2012 there were 29391 elephants in India. According to the all-India Elephant Population Census Report released on August 12, 2017 by the Ministry of Environment, Forests and Climate Change, there are only 27312 elephants.

The latest data released by World Wide Fund for Nature reveal more than half of the wild life in the world was eliminated during the last forty years. There is only one animal whose population is increasing day by day and that animal is called Homo sapiens.

In the chapter titled "Failing Our Gods" in the book The Vanishing: India's Wildlife Crisis, the author Prerna Singh Bindra says: "In India, the elephant is god: Ganesha, the lord of good fortune, remover of obstacles....But today, as human populations continue to skyrocket and habitations edge into elephant territory...Homo sapiens are locked in conflict with the lord's earthly avatar, Elephas maximus... As a conservation journalist, I have been aware of the conflict. The horror stories from across the country keep trickling in: Villagers in Assam riding a baby elephant that was accidentally left behind when her herd was chased aay, then beating her to death as the police and media looked on...

... I came across a photograph... The image was of an elephant, lying lifeless in a pool of its own blood in a field in Assam. Scrawled on the carcass was 'Dhan Chor Bin Laden'—Paddy Thief Bin Laden. The message was disturbing: God had morphed into a thief and a terrorist.

The human tragedy, of course, is monumental. ... Crop damage can be crippling. ... But what is the elephant to do, where does it go, what does it eat, with humans having flattened and invaded its forest? The 'Bin Laden' photograph was from Sonitpur (Assam), the district with the highest rate of deforestation in the country. The elephant reserves in Sonitpur-Kameng were massively encroached post 1990s. ...

It is we, Homo sapiens, who are at fault...It is not the elephants who are the problem. It's us. Elephants are wise, intelligent, peaceable beings with a heart and a conscience. We have wreaked havoc in their lives, taken their home, their food, blocked access to water. We have killed their families, destroyed their society."

Let me conclude by quoting two more sentences from the book: "When we ravage nature, we are threatening our future. When we war with wildlife, it is a war against ourselves."