The Jumbo Gang

About 100 wild Indian elephants have invaded an island in northeastern India. They swam across the river to the island and have been rampaging around, destroying crops and homes and forcing up to 50 families so far into a local school turned refugee camp.

GAUHATI, India - About 100 wild elephants have converged on a river island in northeast India, demolishing homes, feasting on sugarcane and panicking residents, officials said Saturday.

Thousands of villagers were using firecrackers and bonfires to scare away the rampaging animals.

"Dozens of houses have been destroyed in the past three days by adult elephants entering human settlements to look for their wandering calves," said the local magistrate, L.S. Changsan.

Up to 50 families have moved to a local school being used as a refugee camp, Changsan said.

About 150,000 people live on the 338-square mile island of Majuli in the Brahmaputra River, nearly 220 miles east of Assam state's capital, Gauhati.

Officials say the elephants swam to the island from a nearby hill region, beginning their rampage nearly a week ago.

"Forestry workers and officials are on the island, trying to assist the villagers in pushing the elephants away from the settlements," Changsan said. "The job is proving difficult."

The Jumbo Gang strikes again. No, not the elephants. You see, the report also points out that the large number of wild elephants in India are running up against the enormous efforts to clear more land. The land is being cleared in part for the production of crops to be turned into biofuel. Another warning about that was just issued by the International Water Management Institute.

"But to grow biofuel crops you need to use more water and land," Charlotte de Fraiture, a scientist at the institute and lead author of the biofuels study, told AFP.

India and China, which both have over one billion people, "suffer from water shortages which will only get worse as their food demand keeps pace with a growing population, their rising income and their diversifying diets."

The Indian National Remote Sensing Agency reports that about 280,000 hectares of Assam's forests have been cleared between the years 1996 and 2000. So, as the habitat shrinks for the elephants and the  water resources become more and more depleted, who will be left on the short end? I rather suspect it will be the elephants, don't you? It has never been easier to rape the earth. Do it in the name of Kyoto and you can do whatever you want. The Jumbo Gang will protect you.