Human & Elephant Conflict

A rapid growth in India’s development and the human population has slashed the forest vegetation at a devastating rate of 1.6 million hectares in the last 10 years. India hosts about 27,312 Asiatic elephants spread across various Landscapes. Anthropogenic pressure within and around elephant habitats has also led to the loss of their traditional corridors of movement. Today, elephants are highly threatened because of loss, shrinkage, degradation of their habitat. Fragmentation of available habitats has confined most of the populations to small islands. Surviving in the fragmented habitat that they have at their disposal in India today necessitates crossing human-dominated landscapes. In India, More than half of the Asian elephant’s habitat and population has been lost in the last 50 years. Now 80% traditional elephant corridors encroached by farmlands and various development activities. Also, the cultivation of palatable crops in the fringe areas attracts elephants. Elephants are deliberately invading agriculture areas, mostly in the early harvesting period, as they prefer the taste and nutritional value of crops over wild plants. Such physical rapprochement generates daily violence, especially when elephants enter farms, devastate crops, and destroy fragile homes. At the same time, elephants regularly die in this region, electrocuted by the power cables placed on these migration corridors. The fragmented nature of the Indian landscape, with people all around, has increased human-elephant conflict in most parts of the country, which has often led to the loss of both human and elephant lives. Human elephant conflicts caused the death of 2,300 humans and 501 elephants in last 5 years.