Symposium on elephant healthcare and managerial practices

This man was very nice. he spoke from the Scriptures about Elephants

Professor Dr. Kushal Konvar Sarma

The symposium, organised by the College of Veterinary Sciences in collaboration with Project Elephant, was attended by elephant experts from various parts of the country and as well as abroad to look into the various diseases of elephants and different ways of treating them. 

I presented a paper on the THE LOVING APPROACH TO TEMPLE ELEPHANT CARE. My paper was very well received and the people congratulated me for touching their heart.

Rhinos in the field

On the third day we took a field trip to a Wild life Sanctuary where they have the most concentrated population of one horned Rhinos in the World. In about 37 square km they had about 84 Rhinos. i came pretty close to several of them, however we had to keep moving or else he/she would have rammed our car. Those things are HUGE. and dangerous! They can charge at you with high speed if they feel threatened by you. 

There were about 25 wild Rhinos out on that field

My new friend

it was wonderful to watch the Elephant bath

Stool specimens We learned the process how to examine the elephant dung for parasites We also learned how to trim tusks and toe nails. This fellow's Tusks had to be trimmed, because they were growing too close together so he could not use his trunk properly

Here he is showing of his newly trimmed tusks

Elephants At Home With Men 

Elephant-keepers all over the world need to take a tip or two from Assam

By Teresa Rehman

Amusement parks and zoos in European countries can take a cue from Assam’s unique organic traditional culture of elephant-keeping in bringing out a viable and self-sustainable elephant population. The need to institutionalise and study this culture in the international fora was felt at the National Symposium on Elephant Healthcare and Managerial Practices being held at the College of Veterinary Sciences, Guwahati.

Elephants, which are a major crowd puller in amusement parks and zoos in European countries, encounter problems in breeding because of the artificial settings in which they are reared. Elephants from 13 range countries – India, Bangladesh, Nepal, Bhutan, China, Myanmar, Sri Lanka, Thailand, Borneo, Vietnam, Malaysia and People’s Republic of Laos are taken to the European countries. Range countries are those countries where elephants are available in its natural habitat. 

Now, because of CITES (Convention on International Trade (Restriction) on Endangered Species) restrictions, elephants can’t be traded. CITES restrictions apply to those species which are declared endangered by the IUCN and the elephant is one such species. These countries now want to breed the existing elephants and have a viable self-sustaining elephant population. Most often, the calves die and it is difficult to have safe captive births.

The traditional elephant-keeping culture of Assam can be the answer here as because of natural habitat provided, elephants have normal live calves and they survive. “Capturing, training, breeding and feeding elephants is an expertise inherent in our culture. Assam forms a special zone as far as elephants are concerned. The whole world look to Assam for its age-old elephant traditions,” told Kushal Konwar Sarma, an elephant expert, who has deliberated on this issue in many European countries.

Sarma adds that the elephant-keeping culture also incorporates folk songs which transcend all religious barriers. There are Muslim elephant-keepers in Assam who burn incense sticks around the elephants after giving it bath. And the place where the beast is kept has a common name than which means a ‘Hindu place of worship’. 

In upper Assam, elephants are treated like family members – apart from when they are used for logging – and almost every adult male is an expert mahout.  These families don’t hire professional mahouts and the only expense is on the steel chain to secure the beast.

 

“There is an inner strength in this organic culture which needs to be institutionalised, introduced, with some variations in the Western countries. To impose an elephant culture in artificial conditions is not healthy,” says Sarma.