“Elephants are the guardians of the jungle, who safeguard the riches of the forest,” said K. Ramasami, an elephant tracker from Thengumaragada, in Coimbatore.

Addressing the gathering at the Enviro Meet, organised by Osai in Coimbatore on Sunday, Ramaswami said that the jungles would have disappeared a long time ago, had the elephants died away.

Talking about the importance of elephants, Ramaswami also opined that humans are one of the major threats to these creatures. “The first mistake we do is tamper with its environment and disturb it by doing things we should not do in a forest,” he said.

He further added that humans must realize that elephants have good sense of smell and can easily identify the presence of humans. “Keep your eyes, ears, and smelling sense on high alert, and don’t raise your voice inside the forests. This will increase our chances of not getting attacked,” he said.

Sharing his 30 plus years of experiences with the elephants, Ramaswami added that the elephants have outsmarted humans, as the efforts of humans to gain an upper hand in the human-animal conflict has backfired at them.

“Our trenches and our electric fences have failed. It is high time we understood that the only way to control human-animal conflict is to protect the jungle and stay away from it,” said Ramaswami.