[Animals] Nepal elephant ride operators illegally selling animals to India

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Padam does not remember when he began keeping elephants at his hotel. But he says that guests used to pay well for elephant rides in the community forests outside Nepal’s famous Chitwan National Park.

Padam’s two elephants were kept busy from dawn to dusk until March 2020. But as soon as the Covid-19 pandemic restricted travel worldwide, one of Nepal’s most po[CENSORED]r tourist sites was largely deserted. Although the Nepali government has now lifted most travel restrictions, Chitwan hoteliers like Padam are still faced with less than 50 per cent occupancy.

Captive Asian elephants are used for tourist rides, wedding processions and temple ceremonies. The practice is highly controversial, with campaigners attesting the long-lived animals are often taken from the wild and subjected to cruel treatment to make them compliant.

In February, Padam sold one elephant for NPR 6.5 million (approximately USD 56,000) to a trader in India. He hopes this decision will reduce his hotel’s monthly running costs by at least USD 1,000, which had been spent on the elephant’s food and mahout (keeper).

Bishal, another hotelier who leads a cooperative of elephant owners, says the group’s members have sold at least 20 elephants to Indian traders in 2021. They now hold 35 elephants, the lowest number since the cooperative was formed two decades ago.

However, Nepal and India are both signatories to the global Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora (CITES). Asian elephants are listed on Appendix I of the convention, a category for species that are “threatened with extinction which are or may be affected by trade”. Importing live animals listed on Appendix I (or their parts) for “primarily commercial purposes” is not allowed so as not to “endanger further their survival”.

In order to implement CITES, the Nepali government introduced the Act to Regulate and Control International Trade in Endangered Wild Fauna and Flora in 2017. It states, “No person shall purchase, sell, possess, use, plant, rear, captive-breed, transport or import or export or cause to be done so a threatened or vulnerable wild fauna or flora or a specimen thereof.” As defined in the act, “threatened fauna or flora” are all species included on Appendix I of CITES.

In 2019, the government published a set of regulations on how to implement the act. Section 2 of the regulations notes that any person wishing to trade in such species or their parts should meet various statutory obligations and obtain a permit from the government.

There is no evidence that any of these rules have been followed in the cross-border sale of live elephants. Hari Bhadra Acharya, spokesperson for the Department of National Parks and Wildlife Conservation – the government agency responsible for implementing the act – says no one has sought any approval so far.

‘Clearly illegal’ trade

The ongoing trade is clearly illegal, and the government has a responsibility to stop it, says senior advocate Prakash Mani Sharma. The department has not done anything because it has not been “formally” informed about the trade, says Hari Bhadra Acharya. Nevertheless, he adds, he has heard about these activities, and “needful action would be taken once the sale is proved”.

Acharya also says Chitwan National Park officials have been “made responsible” to look into the issue, but the park’s information officer Lokendra Adhikari says the park has done nothing about it.

The Third Pole contacted Chitwan’s chief district officer Prem Lal Lamichhane to ask if he had taken any initiative to stop the trade, two days after reports of an elephant being sold to India appeared on social media and one day after the issue was covered in a national media outlet.

“We tried to confirm what’s going on, but we were told that there was nothing unusual,” Lamichhane said. “We couldn’t confirm the news.”

“If you formulate a law but fail to implement it, it is meaningless,” said Sharma. “The state failing to implement it suggests there is a big nexus between the two [the state and the traders]. We are also violating the international law that we are signatory to.”