Taking to the Treetops

		LATEST COVER STORY The Coming Age of Arthritis June 16, 2003 Issue Past Issues Narco Korea June 9, 2003 ----------------- Nature vs. Nurture June 2, 2003 ----------------- Endless War? May 26, 2003 ----------------- The Democrats May 19, 2003 ----------------- Inside The Matrix May 12, 2003 ----------------- China: SARS Nation May 5, 2003 ----------------- Asian Heroes Apr. 28, 2003 ----------------- Fall of Saddam Apr. 21, 2003 ----------------- Saddam: Last Stand Apr. 14, 2003 ----------------- The SARS Scare Apr. 7, 2003 ----------------- Gulf War II Mar. 31, 2003 ----------------- Asia and Iraq Mar. 24, 2003   ASIA  Saving Japan: The Class of '89  Karachi: Asia's Danger City  S. Korea: Spy Service Reform  Burma: The Junta Turns Deadly HEALTH  China: Doctors' Ethical Dilemma ARTS  Movies: Enter The Animatrix  Movies: HK's Truth or Dare  Books: Clichés of Thailand NOTEBOOK  Pakistan: Shari'a Law Threat  S. Korea: Leaving the DMZ  China: Crackdown on Tycoons  Bangladesh: Dirty Bomb Danger  India: Rampaging Elephants  Milestones  Verbatim TRAVEL  Thailand: Umphang's Bloody Past CNN.com: Top Headlines

Human beings made the collective decision to stop living in trees, oh, about 5 million years ago. But the northern Indian village of Renudih has been forced back in time. There, residents have taken to dwelling permanently in makeshift tree houses because rampaging herds of angry elephants have flattened all the human settlements on the ground. "Who lives in trees? Human beings or monkeys?" asks despondent villager Ramesh Dehri, a 35-year-old aboriginal hill-tribe leader. "In this tribal land, we have been reduced to monkeys."

Kids might get a kick out of living Swiss Family Robinson-style for a spell, but in Renudih it's hardly a lark. Over the past three years 27 people have been killed by stampeding elephants, and several women have been forced to give birth in the treetops, without medical care. Villagers are only free to come down from the trees during the daytime, when the elephant attacks cease. Officials say hundreds of other forest villages in the region are also regularly trampled by irate pachyderms. "When I visit [the villages], I feel like I'm visiting a war-torn place," says Shashi Bhushan, an activist for the People's Union for Civil Liberties. The elephants are agitated because the lack of food in their own natural habitats has forced them to stray into human villages; when the locals resist, the elephants get mad. Meanwhile, the Indian government seems capable of little more than punning. "The problem is elephantine and there is no shortcut solution," says elephant-affairs official H.W. Pandey. A few days in a tree might change his tune.