Puducherry Artist Chalks Up a Campaign to Protect Asiatic Jumbos

Carving elephant figures on pieces of chalk, miniature artist and a private school teacher, Mohana stirs awareness about the decline in the population of elephants in the country.

There has been a long standing conflict between the elephants in the wild and irresponsible activities of humans in their habitat for various commercial and recreational purposes.According to a report by CNN, every year at least a 100 elephants are killed in India and as many as 500 people lose their lives in these conflicts.

In a bid to stir the conscience of people, miniature artist from Puducherry, Mohna who is also a teacher in private school has devised a unique way of carving out elephant figures on chalk sticks as a way to create awareness about the dwindling numbers of elephants in the country.

“We teach children that the lion is the king of the forest but do not talk much about elephants. We have narrowed the path in forests that elephants and other animals use to roam around freely,” Mohana asserts.

Despite being home to the world’s biggest population of Asian elephants, they are on IUCN’s Endangered list since 1986 as their numbers have dwindled by at least half over a span of last three elephant generations. The Asiatic jumbos are found across 13 countries and a lot of their habitats in the jungle has been cut short due to agriculture and infrastructure building.”

Coexistence of Elephants with human dates back to millions of years. Their significance to our natural environment, culture, our heritage is ageless, though ivory trade other parts of the world earlier threatened the very existence of this majestic species but many country pledged to end trade in ivory on recent World Elephant Day celebrated on 12th August.

Of late an event in Union Square also highlighted the role of the US and European countries in reducing its own ivory consumption and by building pressure for a global ban on ivory trade.