Because of these threats posed to farmers and villagers, elephants are often killed as a form of retaliation, as a “punishment” for the damages they cause or a “solution” that could end the problem of crop raiding. A method of killing the elephants in Sumatra would be that of poisoning, where the farmers would poison a little bit of food and leave it for the elephants to eat. This is commonly used as it does not involve a direct confrontation with the elephants, which might be dangerous for the farmers.
Another method that villagers staying near Way National Kambas Park employ, in violent defense of their farms, is the application of spiked foot-traps and guns to maim and kill elephants, increasing the likelihood of injury to elephants.
Just this year, in February 2018, a female Sumatran elephant was found dead on in Way Kambas National Park with five bullet wounds in its chest and head, for reasons which were not reported on the news.
In January 2018, a male Sumatran elephant was found dead with its tusks removed in a community plantation inside the Mount Raya protected forest in South Sumatra.
Last December in 2017, a dead pregnant elephant was found in an oil palm plantation in Indonesia’s westernmost province on Sumatra island, Aceh. The authorities believed that it was a case of deliberate poisoning.
An article published by the CNN stated that the locals in Sumatra don’t have the malicious intent of killing the elephants and in fact they feel as though they have no other option than that. Some of them even say they take pride in the Sumatran elephant and that this animal is part of their national identity. Perhaps they don’t see the consequences that their actions could bring about – no one would imagine that killing one elephant could eventually lead to the extinction of the entire population but if many villagers do that, very soon the whole species would be wiped out.
This ties in with the virtues in environmental ethics, where there is compassion extended toward nature. Although there was an element of the key virtue of humility displayed – that is, the moral discomfort when viewing the destruction of nature – however, there wasn’t the ethic of non-violence displayed since the locals did not refrain from causing harm to the elephants. Instead of searching and thinking of alternatives to deal with the human-elephant conflict, they took the easy and cruel way out, which are usually the reactions to HECs.