HOW EXILED ROHINGYA AND ENDANGERED ELEPHANTS LEARNT TO CO-EXIST
Refugees and wildlife share the same habitat but the start to the deal was rocky, Campbell MacDiarmid writes in Cox’s Bazar, Bangladesh
When an ethnic cleansing campaign drove 700,000 Rohingya from their homes in Myanmar into neighbouring Bangladesh last year, the only land available to host them was a national forest.
But the hilly, waterlogged jungle where the refugees hacked out a camp was already home to another threatened population: Bangladesh’s last surviving elephants.
After escaping massacres at home, an arduous journey on foot and by boat, and the rigours of refugee camp life, the Rohingya soon found themselves in conflict with Asia’s largest land animal.
The Chittagong Hill Tracts on which the sprawling Kutupalong-Balukhali Refugee Camp is built are among the few remaining habitats for the elephants.
Now, incidents in which elephants have killed members of the Rohingya Muslim community has led to a system of watchmen. They have the job of keeping the refugees safe from elephant incursions.
But a longer-term problem remains. With the camp straddling a major migration corridor the future of the elephant population is at risk, further underscoring the unsustainable nature of the Rohingya’s exile.
In Bangladesh there are only 268 surviving elephants, the International Union for the Conservation of Nature estimates. About 90 per cent of the critically endangered animals live in the jungles of south-eastern Bangladesh.
The Rohingya are an ethnic group who have long faced persecution from the Buddhist majority government across the border in Myanmar’s Rakhine state. The government regards them as illegal Bengali migrants.
In August last year, most of Rakhine’s remaining Rohingya population fled a co-ordinated government campaign of arrests, murders, rapes and arson.
Arriving in Bangladesh and consigned to the jungle, the Rohingya soon fell foul of the local wildlife. Incidents followed a typical pattern.
When the Rohingya entered the jungle to collect firewood, or roaming elephants approached the camp, any interaction between man and beast would attract a gaggle of curious onlookers.
Often the elephants would become alarmed and stampede. Between August last year, when the refugee influx began, and March this year, 13 Rohingya were killed in elephant attacks.
Dr Haseeb Irfanullah, a Bangladesh programme co-ordinator at the union, visited the camp in January and was immediately introduced to the danger.
“I can remember around 2am an elephant got into the camp silently,” Dr Irfanullah says. “People tried to scare the elephant away and it got scared and began trampling shelters. It killed an old guy”.
Without action, camp residents would continue to be killed.
“Our main goal is saving the community from elephant attacks,” Dr Irfanullah says.
At sunset every night, blue-uniformed men scale bamboo watchtowers built around the margins of the camp. They survey the surrounding jungle for elephants until sunrise.
Formed in March, the Elephant Response Teams are a partnership between the union, the UN refugee agency and Rohingya volunteers, who have the job of protecting the camp and the elephants.
The 360 volunteers take it in turns to be stationed in pairs in the 60 towers overlooking the jungle, earning a modest wage. They are trained to gently direct elephants away from the camps and to keep away crowds.
“People love to watch the elephant,” says team member Roshon Ali, 45. “They have such an enchanting figure, you can never tire of looking at them.”
Mr Ali says the Rohingya often get so excited to see an elephant that they approach too close and crowd around.
“We call them uncle,” he says. “People say they are a bit like a saint.”
Despite being one of the few Rohingya to attend university in Yangon, Myanmar’s largest city, Mr Ali has always worked as a farmer because of a ban on his ethnic group’s employment in the country’s public service.
On the rare occasions he saw wild elephants in Myanmar, Mr Ali was always careful not to harm them.
“Our elders taught us never to throw anything at an elephant,” he says.
Rohingya lore says that elephants have excellent hearing and can even understand humans.
“When we go in the jungle we call out to them that we are there to protect the forest and we aren’t there to harm them,” Mr Ali says.
Since the teams were formed, there have been no injuries to camp residents from elephant attacks, Dr Irfanullah says. The teams have thwarted eight elephant incursions on the camp boundaries.
But as the presence of the elephants threatens camp residents, the reverse is also true.
The Kutupalong-Balukhali Refugee Camp is so big – as a conglomeration of smaller camps it has become the world’s largest refugee settlement – that it has isolated nearly a quarter of Bangladesh’s elephants from the wider population.
“The whole area was elephant habitat,” says Dr M A Aziz, professor of zoology at Jahanginar University. “The camps have interrupted their migration corridor.”
These corridors once allowed Bangladesh’s elephants to intermingle and wander freely into Myanmar. If they are not restored, Dr Aziz fears for the future of the herd.
“Twenty four per cent of the national population is entrapped by the camps, so if we lose them it’s huge,” he says. “They can’t mate with the larger population and in the long run will lose genetic diversity and may not survive.”
Dr Aziz and the union are lobbying for the restoration of elephant corridors right through the camps – a plan that faces several major obstacles.
The sheer density of the camp makes it difficult to find the space for 300-metre wide paths, which would need electric fencing and vegetation suitable for elephant consumption. Beyond the logistical challenge, the union must convince the Bangladesh government that the task is necessary.
Despite its hospitality in welcoming the refugees, the government of Bangladesh is reluctant to commit to longer-term planning in the camp, fearing it would amount to acceptance that the Rohingya may never return home.
So there is little appetite from Bangladeshi leaders for the camp, and its massive population, to become a permanent fixture in an already overcrowded country.
But for Mr Ali, the survival of the country’s last Asian elephants is of paramount importance not only for the endangered animals, but for those exiled into the jungle.
“They say if the elephant survives in the forest, the forest will remain healthy and everything will grow well,” he says. “And if the forest survives, so will we.”
People love to watch the elephant. We call them uncle. People say they are a bit like a saint ROSHON ALI Elephant Response Team member