The tea industry has called for a multi-party collaboration for development of a broad human-elephant conflict management protocol to be uniformly followed by all gardens.

This was resolved at a meeting called by the Indian Tea Association (ITA) in Calcutta recently to address the problem of human-elephant conflict faced by tea gardens in Assam and West Bengal.

The meet was initiated by Karan Paul, chairman of Apeejay Tea, a member of the ITA, which has been implementing conflict-mitigation strategies with the World Wildlife Fund (WWF) for the last three years to significant impact.

The WWF presented a strategy to the ITA members and success stories of its three-year collaboration with Apeejay Tea at the meet in which 15 top tea companies and senior officials of the WWF participated.

Paul, chairman of Apeejay Surrendra Group and Apeejay Tea, said, “Apeejay Tea was perhaps the first tea company to fund an intensive conflict-management strategy in Sonitpur because four of our gardens were in the hot zone. As a donor and a victim of human-elephant conflict, the successes of Apeejay Tea’s partnership with WWF-India for the past three years have brought us valuable insights on solutions to the human-elephant conflict issue.

“We have shared these with the Indian Tea Association and hope to see a multi-party collaboration that will lead to development of a broad human-elephant conflict management protocol followed by all tea gardens uniformly.

“There is a positive inclination in all companies to work together on solutions. We hope that we will be successful in creating a platform as it will lead to implementation of largescale interventions, tried and tested in Apeejay Tea gardens, and stem loss of life and injury to people working in tea gardens and elephants across the Brahmaputra landscape,” he added.

ITA chairman Vivek Goenka said a multi-stakeholder collaboration, including the government, would aid implementation of largescale interventions across the tea sector.

Director, species and landscapes programme, WWF-India, Dipankar Ghose, said it has been utilising multi-pronged approaches to address the human-elephant conflict.