How rising elephant death toll in Bandhavgarh raises pertinent questions

Continuing assessment of the shocking deaths of 10 wild elephants, since October 29, in Madhya Pradesh’s Bandhavgarh Tiger Reserve has pointed to the probability of presence of mycotoxins in Kodo millet suspected to have been consumed by the 13-member herd even as the spectre of retribution killing by poisoning by locals loomed.
According to the latest statement issued by the office of L. Krishnamoorthy, additional principal chief conservator of forests, wildlife, Madhya Pradesh, teams of wildlife health officers and those from the School of Wildlife Forensic and Health (SWFH) in Jabalpur had, by October 31, completed the postmortems of nine elephants, with the samples being sent to the SWFH forensic lab for analysis.
The forest department’s wildlife veterinarians dealing with the crisis were taking expert help from the Indian Veterinary Research Institute, Bareilly; Wildlife Institute of India, Dehradun; the State Forensic Science Laboratory, Sagar; and the Centre for Cellular and Molecular Biology, Hyderabad to decipher the mycotoxins suspected behind the deaths.
Mycotoxins are naturally occurring toxins produced by moulds (fungi) and can be found in food.
The official statement said monitoring of the three remaining elephants by experts was underway and that the authorities were probing all possible angles of death, including criminal activity.
Sources in the Bandhavgarh reserve said that on the afternoon of October 29, locals from Salkhania village in Pator range had informed forest department staff about dead elephants in the forests near the village. When the staff reached the spot, a male elephant and three females were found dead while five elephants were on the ground in distress. Locals informed that a herd of 13 elephants had been in the area for the past three days. The animals had raided fields and fed on paddy on the morning on October 29.
Even as the death toll climbed, veterinarians from the Jabalpur Veterinary College who rushed to the spot to treat the unwell elephants had encountered some resistance from other members of the elephant herd.
The presence of elephants in Bandhavgarh is relatively recent, only since 2016. The estimated 60 elephants residing in the reserve are thought to have come from neighbouring Chhattisgarh.
One of initial suspicions was of the elephants being administered pesticide through water or paddy. There have long been reports of man-animal conflict in Bandhavgarh. In November 2022, an elephant was found dead in the reserve in a suspected case of retribution killing. However, nothing could be ascertained conclusively in the postmortem. After wildlife activist Ajay Dubey complained in the matter, a probe was conducted and it was found that the elephant had been burned after its body was discovered.
Bandhavgarh, with close to 300 villages around the 1,500 sq. km reserve, is vulnerable to man-animal conflicts. This is also perhaps why the reserve reports the highest number of human kills by tigers in Madhya Pradesh. Most villagers have very small holdings and carry out subsistence agriculture.