Elephants in India may be extinct in 25 years time, says leading Aussie vet-film-maker
Elephants in India will be extinct in 25 years at current loss of habitat, according to leading Australian vet and film-maker Steve Van Mil.
Van Mil who has spent years treating animals and filming in the wild, will soon release a staggering watershed documentary Elephant Wars about tens of thousands of elephants that die every year because of human conflict. The greatest threat to the world’s elephants is in Assam, north of India.
``The habitat is disappearing at a dramatic rate in Assam, due to exploding Indian population and huge influx of refugees from Bangladesh. This is producing a large-scale conflict between humans and elephants. At the current rate, their elephants will not be around in 25 years time. This is a new war that has dramatically escalated over the last five years.
The Asian elephant has been red-listed as endangered since 1986 but Van Mil said the world was only just waking up to the reality that Asian elephants may now seriously become extinct in this lifetime. He said elephants have no choice but to raid crops in order to survive.
To research the documentary, director-producer Van Mil filmed in India and several countries in Africa to gauge the effects of conflict with humans.
He said the highest concentration of elephants (150,000) in any country in the world is in Botswana where there is little conflict because Botswana is relatively affluent, has a small human population and government and wildlife authorities have been proactive in creating corridors so elephants can roam from region to region.
The documentary Elephant Wars is expected to be released in March next year and will be like the Inconvenient Truth of the elephant world as it pulls no punches! He said the greatest challenge is now in seeking backing for the film.
``We also filmed in Zambia, where human-elephant conflict is a huge problem due to high population and subsistence farming. On to Namibia, we saw a lack water is the biggest issue for elephants. They raid villages to get water.
``What we have captured for this film is like no other. It is hard-hitting and confrontational. It is not a natural history piece on the lives and habits of elephants. It is a current affairs expose of the war that is being waged out there. There ha s never been an international film on elephants like it.’’
``Also, where there's a market and money, corruption and poaching will occur. Legalising trade in ivory won't stop the black market - quite the opposite in my opinion. The only solution is to make the penalties for poaching draconian as in Kenya where there is stuff all hunting or poaching there.
An international ban on selling ivory came into force in 1989 after widespread poaching sent Africa’s elephant populations diving. But an estimated 20,000 are still killed every year by poachers who sell tusks on the black market, in a multi-million-dollar industry run by criminal syndicates around the world.