Kathmandu, February 22.
By Kushal Basnet
Chitwan National Park has been a place to be for a long time, hosting the rare one-horned rhinoceros and Bengal tigers among a wide range of fascinating wild animals. The park recently acquired another, if somewhat dark, star: Dhurbe, a male elephant and a notorious troublemaker, made headlines in the national news media last December, albeit not for the first time.
Death and Destruction
More than 50 wild elephants reside in the Chitwan National Park, and Dhurbe is not the one who would make it to the list of favourite elephants like Surus and Hanno. Official reports indicate that this infamous beast has killed 22 people in India and Nepal since 2009. He made more victims than Ramachandran, another feared killer elephant from Kerala.
Stories of Dhurbe’s infamy reemerge with each new sighting. His ominous track record is even available on Wikipedia. Apart from killing people, the forty-year-old Dhurbe has destroyed dozens of houses while damaging the crops in the vicinity of the national park. His wild behaviour made the news from 2009 until 2013 when he disappeared for years until resurfacing in 2018.
In April of that year, Dhurbe reportedly damaged five houses in the Shukra Nagar area of Chitwan, terrorising the locals. The locals even obstructed the Postal Highway for four hours, demanding compensation. A couple of months later, a 65-year-old was attacked by a wild elephant in Nijgadh, Bara. The locals feared that the killer elephant could be none other than Dhurbe, given that the nearby Parsa Wildlife Reserve is his second home.
Binod Shrestha, an official from Nepal Trust for Nature Conservation (NTNC), was on the field for a Rhino census in 2021. Shrestha was injured while running away from Dhurbe’s attack. Less than a year later, in January 2022, Dhurbe attacked and killed a 35-year-old Nepal Army soldier who was patrolling Chitwan National Park.
Lone bulls wreak havoc
National park officials point toward Dhurbe’s social isolation when looking for explanations for his violent behaviour. ‘Elephants live in groups. Dhurbe is among the solitary elephants in the national park alongside Ronaldo and Gobinde,’ explained Ganesh Prasad Tiwari, information officer at the national park. ‘These elephants are aggressive because they are separated from the cooperative environment that exists in a group.’
A study by Ashok Kumar Ram, published in 2021, confirms this statement. The study – titled ‘Patterns and determinants of elephant attacks on humans in Nepal’ – notes that only five per cent of elephant attacks on humans are from elephants in herds, with the solitary adult bull elephants being responsible for a whopping majority of attacks.
In search of love
His loneliness must have bothered him. In 2018, Dhurbe simply broke into the Chitwan National Park army post and walked out with Tirthamankali, a domesticated female elephant living in that post. Not only did he manage to break the chains tying Tirthamankali, but he also attacked and injured a male elephant named Paras Gaj. Tirthamankali has been spotted with Dhurbe time and again since then.
Domesticated female elephants around the national park had walked away with solitary wild male elephants in the past as well. National park officials have stated that domesticated female elephants in the park almost always bear baby elephants with the wild male elephants.
Hunt for a mad elephant
Dhurbe was lucky to find Tirthamankali and may rejoice that he is still alive. He deserves all the congratulations, while things could have worked out quite differently a few years ago. After more aggression from his side, a radio collar was tied to the beast to track its whereabouts, but it was soon lost. Fed up with the ongoing rampage, army and national park officials decided to kill him. A joint task force of nearly a hundred soldiers and officers was mobilised to hunt him down. However, he could not be located.
Whether this was cunning behaviour from the animal or sheer luck, the fact that he could not be traced saved his life since the ideas around coping with problematic wildlife started changing. The new policies tilted toward protection rather than slaughter. Since then, the goal has centred around tracking Dhurbe and containing any possible damage.
He was radio-collared again in 2020, but he somehow managed to get rid of it. In December 2023, at long last, Dhurbe was finally darted again. A third satellite collar was tied to his neck, and his tusks were cut.
At the crossroads of Human-animal conflict
Dhurbe is not alone. On the serious side, the case of human-animal conflict in Nepal is often highlighted by such elephant encounters. Human-elephant conflicts have been reported across Nepal, from Jhapa in the east to Shuklaphanta National Park in the Far West.
A case study by WWF observed in 2007 that wild elephants are the animals with the highest threat level for locals living around forest areas, followed by wild boar and deer. The human-elephant conflict in Nepal is synergetic. Elephants have contributed to crop and property damage, harm to livestock, and human casualties. On the other hand, electrocuting of elephants through electric fences and other retaliatory killing incidents have developed as a human response.
In addition to constant conflict with humans, the elephants in the protected area have been troubled by poaching for ivory and habitat destruction, placing them in the endangered category of the Red List of IUCN.