Often an unwittingly-used-term, ‘conservation’ may not be easy as it sounds. Talking of elephant-related issues as an instance, for most of us who dwell in the cities, it is always comfortable to debate either for or against the elephants’ presence in human settlements. We have ample comments on how villagers should treat or respond to the elephants that trespass their fields or how respective governments are failing to take the right steps.

The conservation conundrum around elephants is akin to a tug of war – between a farmer who spends all his sweat and savings for a livelihood and on the other end of a rope, a herd of elephants trapped in a maze of heavily fragmented spaces, scanty resources and accelerated human activities. Who do you think should win?

While we debate over the winner leisurely in a cosy bed, villagers living on the edge of the forest spend sleepless nights for fears of being trampled any second. Elephants on the other hand anticipate the dusk to avoid confronting humans, to forage or swiftly travel to the nearest refuges.

Gruesome images of elephants being killed in road/railway accidents or getting electrocuted in the fields are often difficult to scroll through. At the same time, the laments of a woman whose husband got trampled by an elephant or the vast paddy fields damaged by the moving herds of elephants are rare reflections of the same story. Winning, thus, is not a part of this unique tug of war, but survival may be!

The game may not be so frightening if we knew the strategy of survival for both. Connecting safe patches with peaceful passages, avoiding cultivation of crops on the immediate forest fringes and lighting up the villages may help. Maintaining the health of the forests to share spaces and resources with non-human colleagues, and of course, being considerate that people at the fringe must coexist will be another strategy to lengthen the game! Simplifying the mode of ex-gratia payments for those who have lost their harvest, property and life can salve the pain and anger. To seek the quintessence of coexistence, one can always turn to traditionally co-existing tribal folks.

When losses are considered as the penalties paid to Mother Nature and gains as blessings – a tribal philosophy – one will seldom seek vengeance against the animals. But when our possessions increase and so do our losses, that is where we lose the balance. And that is where we as the winner in this game may intimidate our non-human opponents — even their survival. One must always remember the last rule — nature can thrive without us, but can we without nature?