Working Elephants In Kanha National Park Set To Get A Holiday
Around 16 working elephants at Kanha Tiger Reserve will receive a rejuvenation holiday with bathing, massages, nutritious food, fruit and health assessments. The initiative highlights the need to replicate natural behaviours for captive elephants through water, social interaction, forest walks and better welfare practices.
Working elephants at Kanha Tiger Reserve will receive dedicated care and enrichment designed to support their health and well-being | Representative Image
Elephants in the wild are free to enjoy a wide dietary choice, forage leisurely as they roam the landscape and maintain social bonds. This evolutionary requirement is unmet for captive elephants, and they must rely on the kindness of their owners to mimic wild behaviours.
It is welcome, therefore, that some 16 elephants in the Kanha Tiger Reserve in Madhya Pradesh are to be given special treats and care during a rejuvenation holiday. Like other such camps, the jumbo inmates will be bathed, massaged, and fed choice food and fruit, and their health needs assessed to ensure their physical and psychological well-being.
It is not difficult to imagine the distress caused to a sensitive animal in captivity, considering the freedoms that it enjoys in the wild—ranging across hectares of forest, remaining with a large group, engaging in playful behaviour, moving slowly to forage, and not being pressured to perform hard work to benefit humans.
What is more, the evolutionary biology of elephants places them closer to aquatic mammals, in the way their lungs are attached to the ribs and other similarities. This makes water a major attraction to elephants, and they like to spend a lot of time in it.
Rejuvenation camps for captive elephants in nature reserves can attempt to replicate some of these conditions and give much-needed psychological support to the animals that carry fallen trees, ferry tourists, and act as kumkis to tame belligerent wild elephants.
Care For Captive Elephants
It should be readily evident that not all captive elephants can enjoy such luxuries, because some of them maintained by temples are old and weak. The very act of subduing a wild-caught elephant often involves considerable cruelty, breaking down its resistance while remaining confined to a narrow kraal until it shows good behaviour.
Scientists rightly urge owners of captive elephants to learn important aspects of their natural behaviour and ecology to avoid subjecting the animals to a harsh life. In the case of elephants kept in temples, for instance, holding camps close to their location would remove the need to clumsily load them into trucks and transport them across long distances for a holiday.
Ensuring adequate water to bathe, wallow in and play, and mix with other members of their species under expert guidance is crucial, as is a noise-free atmosphere, to avoid stressing them out. Opportunities for long walks through forested landscapes are a morale booster.
Reducing Captivity Must Be Goal
Unlike their African counterparts, Asian elephants have a long history of capture and confinement, dating back a few thousand years, to the Indus Valley civilisation. In spite of being sensitive social animals, they were dragged into wars and turned into beasts of burden.
Reducing the number of captive elephants to just those that cannot survive in the wild must be the goal. Giving them a holiday should bring them some cheer.
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