Pune based WRCS’s “Living with Elephants: The Uttara Kannada documentary”

By The Flag Post staff
October 05, 2024
youtube.com/@theflagpost

About “Living with Elephants: The Uttara Kannada documentary”: It addresses the issue of habitat loss and fragmentation of elephant corridors that leads to crop damage by elephants. As farmers become agitated, and their retaliation to the gentle giants causes them injury and even death. The documentary highlights the plight of the farmers in the taluks of Mundgod-Yellapur in Karnataka’s Uttara Kannada (U.K) district.

Some of the farmers who’ve spoken on camera are from the villages of: Hotegiri, Jogikoppa, Kandrenkoppa, Nagnoor, Naranali and Somapur. The highlight of the documentary is “that through technology and innovative solutions with good cause and good intentions, it’s possible to have co- existence with humans and elephants”. Farmers in 35 villages guard their crops with simple, low cost methods. Their crops stand safe and the elephants roam free. The community-based conflict mitigation (CBCM) model proves that, the WRCS project is helping to establish a model where farmers are successfully protecting their own crops from elephants. It is a replicable model with proven potential and WRCS plans to implement the same in other landscapes, where man-animal conflicts are known to exist.