India has nearly 30,000 wild elephants. Unfortunately, we lost more than 490 wild elephants due to unnatural causes in the last five years. Electrocution and collisions with trains were the main causes of these fatalities.

The recent capacity-building workshop on ‘Minimising elephant mortalities on railway track’ for the officials of Indian Railways, at the Dehardun-based Wildlife Institute of India (WII), highlighted the fact that India has lost 494 elephants to train-hit incidents, electrocution, poaching, and poisoning over the past five years.

Referring to a 2017 estimate of the number of wild elephants in the country, Ashwini Kumar Choubey, Union Minister of State for Environment, Forest and Climate Change, informed Lok Sabha recently that India had 29,964 wild elephants.

Karnataka had the highest number of wild elephants at 6,049, followed by Assam at 5,719, Kerala at 5,706, and Tamil Nadu at 2,761. There are 32 elephant reserves covering around 76,508-sq-km area in 14 States.

Around 30 per cent of the country’s wild elephants live in large and contiguous forests. The remaining elephants are distributed across fragmented landscapes that have shrunk amid growing human activities, including agricultural expansion. This makes them approach the fields and plantations for food.

Data provided in response to questions in Parliament shows that Assam experienced 24 elephant deaths due to train-hit incidents and Odisha suffered 80 elephant deaths due to electrocution between 2018-19 and 2022-23.

In fact, India lost more than 57 elephants per year due to electrocution and more than 12 elephants per year due to collision with trains over the past five years.

The WII workshop mentioned that 186 elephants were killed on railway tracks between 2009 and 2021. Among States, Assam had the highest number of elephant deaths due to train hits with 62 deaths, followed by West Bengal at 57, and Odisha at 27 during the above-mentioned period.

According to the data provided in Parliament, train-hit incidents led to 15 elephant deaths each in 2021-22 and 2022-23. While elephant deaths due to the train-hit incidents was the lowest at 12 in 2020-21, it was the highest at 19 in 2018-19.

Cause for concern

Experts at the WII workshop said such unnatural deaths could disrupt herd dynamics and further enhance the risk of human-elephant conflicts as the loss of a single older elephant in a herd is the loss of experience for the other elephants in the herd.

Loss of older elephants disrupts herd dynamics and increases the risk of human-elephant conflict, as younger elephants are more likely to stray into human-dominated areas.

According to the Union Ministry of Environment, Forest and Climate Change, 150 elephant corridors across 15 elephant ranges in the country have been ground-validated. In a recent reply in Lok Sabha, Ashwini Kumar Choubey said his Ministry has informed the State governments and administrations of Union Territories to take necessary steps to protect and conserve the elephant corridors.

The Union Ministry of Environment, Forest and Climate Change, in collaboration with the Railways Ministry and Ministry of Power, has taken some measures to minimise accidental deaths of elephants.

Measures

The Minister informed Lok Sabha that the advisory has been issued on implementation of measures to mitigate the impact of power transmission lines and other power infrastructure on elephant and other wildlife by the Power Ministry to all power distribution and transmission companies in all States and Union Territories.

Inter-ministerial meetings convened regularly with the Railways and Power ministries to holistically address the issue of accidental death of elephants due to train-hit and electrocution.

A permanent co-ordination committee has been constituted between the Railways Ministry and the Ministry of Environment, Forest and Climate Change for preventing elephant death in train-hit incidents. Permanent and temporary speed restrictions have been imposed in identified elephant corridors and habitats.

Elephants in captivity

In January 2019, India had 2,589 elephants in private custody, excluding the zoological parks.

A majority of these elephants were located in the North-Eastern States, with 902 captive elephants in Assam, followed by Arunachal Pradesh - 109, Tripura - 64, Nagaland - 15 and Meghalaya - eight.

Among other States, Kerala had a maximum of 518 captive elephants, followed by 146 in Karnataka and 135 in Tamil Nadu. Rajasthan and West Bengal had 113 and 100 elephants, respectively, in private custody.

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