Have you herd?: In Assam, a new roadmap for the safe passage of elephants

Before 1990, every year after the monsoon, elephants would migrate from what is now the Sonai Rupai Wildlife Sanctuary and the Nameri National Park in northern Assam to the Arimora Grasslands on the banks of the Brahmaputra.
Following regional political turmoil in the 1990s, large tracts of forest along their path became paddy fields. About 118 sq km of forest (about three times the size of Delhi) vanished, studies have found.
Some of this missing forest formed a crucial patchwork amid tea estates. The herd would use this patchwork to reach their promised grasslands, much like a child crossing a stream by stepping on stones. With the patches of forest gone, the elephants had to forge a new path to the grasslands and, in doing so, they became a threat to fields in Sonitpur district.
Moreover, in forging a new path, they became skittish. The earlier large herds, probably headed by wise, experienced matriarchs, split into smaller herds each headed by a younger and likely-less-experienced leader. The Sonitpur farmers were also unused to elephants and how to handle them. Novelty led to tragedy.
A map of Assam in which each district is coloured in shades of red darkening with growing human-elephant conflict colours Sonitpur in a bright crimson. In 2001, over 20 humans and 20 elephants died in conflicts with each other, according to data from the World Wide Fund for Nature-India (WWF-India).
Then came an intervention. WWF-India began working with communities affected by this conflict. They approached young people who had tried to chase the elephants away, and taught them how to guard their communities responsibly instead. In Anti-Depredation Squads (ADS), they taught these young men what could work and what was deadly. They designed and taught farmers to build cost-effective energised fencing that was safe for humans and elephants. Crucially, they trained village-level committees to maintain these fences, and worked with the forest department to ensure fences did not lie along the main migration route.
These actions reduced crop damage behind the fence. ADS members were also trained to help communities apply for crop-damage reparations.
“This is working for now, because the elephants here are not habituated to the fences,” says Aritra Kshettry, who leads the elephant conservation wing at WWF-India. “In Tamil Nadu, the elephants have learnt to overcome these fences.”
So, alongside, WWF-India collared two animals and the telemetry from these devices shows how elephants moved with the rains, leaving the forests as the monsoon ended and heading back before the onset of summer. This information helped communities prepare. Planting alternate crops and lighting loud fireworks were other strategies used.
Soon enough, the death toll began to fall. By 2013, it had halved, and by 2022, it had halved again.
“The indigenous Boro tribe revere the deity Ganesha, and they extend this reverence towards elephants,” the WWF-India team told me. “Even as locals express frustration at crop damage, they speak of elephants fondly, not as an entity that does not belong.”
(Mridula Ramesh is a climate-tech investor and author of The Climate Solution and Watershed. She can be reached on [email protected])