ASSAM'S FRAGMENTED ELEPHANT HABITATS ESCALATING CONFLICT

Assam has 12 identified elephant corridors but rapid land-use changes and infrastructure development forcing elephants into human-dominated areas - Study

- USHA PERI

CREATING buffer zones with crops elephants avoid such as chilli, ginger, garlic and citrus, restoring fragmented forest corridors, and introducing real-time elephant alert systems could significantly reduce deadly encounters between humans and elephants in Assam, says a new 23-year study on human-elephant conflict (HEC) that analysed 1,806 conflict incidents across the north eastern state.

The researchers found that rapid habitat fragmentation, expanding settlements and disrupted elephant movement routes are increasingly pushing elephants into villages and farmlands, intensifying conflict in several districts.

The study, titled ‘Landscape determinants of human-elephant conflict in Assam, India: insights from two decades of spatial analysis,’ examined 1,806 conflict incidents recorded between 2000 and 2023 across 21 forest divisions in Assam. The incidents included 1,468 human deaths and 337 injuries.

The study used satellite imagery, spatial hotspot mapping, kernel density analysis and landscape fragmentation models to identify ecological and human-induced drivers of conflict. Authors Athira N, Ramesh Pandey, Kapana Roy, Ananya Dutta, Dheeraj Mittal, Parag Nigam, Anukul Nath and Bilal Habib belonged to Wildlife Institute of India, Ministry of Environment and Forests and Climate Change and Ghaziabad-based Academy of Scientific and Innovative Research.