Press Release: March 12, 1999

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Loki’s Saga Continues: Indian Elephant Cover-Up

The essential question is, if there is nothing wrong with Loki, then why are the Indian authorities in Tamil Nadu going to such extremes not allowing India Project for Animals and Nature Director Deanna Krantz to photograph the elephant and even having employees assault and file charges against a German tourist taking pictures of Loki? And why are they refusing expert outside help and financial assistance to ensure the well-being of this endangered species? Who is pulling the strings to keep growing world-wide concern for this elephant at bay, and why? He is visible from the road by day, chained to a tree.

What of the investigation that Minister Maneka Gandhi was said to have conducted? Where is her report?

Chief Wildlife Warden R.P.S. Katwal, in his official report of March 5, 1999, justifies the incarceration of Loki in a log crate for almost 7 months by stating that, “The fact is that wild elephants can be domesticated in this manner alone.”

“Domestication entails many generations of selective breeding,” says IPAN Consultant Veterinarian and ethologist Dr. Michael W. Fox. “For anyone responsible for the conservation and welfare of wild animals to confuse the “taming” of a wild elephant by breaking his spirit through conditioned-helplessness with the domestication process is regrettable. But what is even more disturbing to me is Mr. Katwal’s insistence that the elephant, whom they have named “Moorthy”, in honor of veterinarian Dr. Krishnamurthy, “looks happy in the company of other elephants in the camp.”

IPAN has video documentation of Loki chained to a tree, surrounded by the tuskers (kumkis), also chained to trees, who were used to help capture him and who gored him terribly.

“To presume that Loki is happy, chained and vulnerable, with these elephants in view, demonstrates a limited sense of empathy and common sense. Surely Mr. Katwal is not as emotionally and intellectually challenged as his observations would seem to imply. So why the cover-up?” asks Dr. Fox.

In his report, Mr. Katwal writes that the State Forest Department’s Teppakadu Elephant Camp in the Mudumalai Wildlife Sanctuary is “maintaining about 30 animals for conservation and breeding programme.” So it would seem that, since U.S. funding under the Asian Elephant Conservation Act of 1997 may soon be available to help keep this elephant camp going (that, for some time actually held an evening circus with decorated elephants parading and doing tricks for tourists) – it is important to defend the reputation of this camp. What role in elephant conservation, other than keeping malnourished elephants in chains, this camp is playing, remains to be documented.

India cannot continue to expect foreign support for elephant conservation if these internal problems are not addressed and Indian wildlife scientists continue to be funded but have no voice politically, and are intimidated by local vested interests.

As for the role that the Teppakadu Elephant Camp may play in elephant conservation and breeding, since elephant habitat encroachment and destruction continues unabated in the Nilgiris, its primary goal, which has not yet been achieved, is most probably to become a commercial breeding center for Indian elephants. It is not possible to simply breed young elephants in captivity and then release them into the wild. They are interdependent herd animals, and there is little suitable habitat left for them anywhere near the Camp that has not been encroached upon. So what ever calves are born at the Camp will probably be sold to commercial interests in India and abroad.

According to a local newspaper, 15 African elephants were to have been sent to this Elephant Camp from South Africa. This did not happen, and IPAN was blamed for giving the Elephant Camp a bad reputation. But perhaps IPAN should be praised once again, since Indian elephants have been dying in the U.S. from a herpes virus that is endemic and relatively harmless in African elephants. (New York Times, Feb. 19, 1999 – Death of Captive Asian Elephants May be Linked to Virus Found in their African Zoomates) So we should thank Loki for this, if not IPAN, because had these young elephants from Africa come to the Elephant Camp, they could have decimated the elephant population in the Nilgiris.

It would be tragic indeed, if what is happening to India’s largest elephant population in the Nilgiris parallels the fate of the tiger in Madya Pradesh where “Project Tiger”, according to the Environmental Investigation Agency, has been exposed as nothing more than a public relations exercise for a State government bent on exploiting its remaining natural resources, to the detriment of the tiger, the forests, and the people who depend on them. *

* p. 14 in The State of the Tiger. India’s Tiger Crisis. London, England, Environmental Investigation Agency, 1999.