Help Save Elephants in India

Elephants migrate from one forest to another in their established routes. However, due to rapid urbanization and development, these routes are facing a high level of degradation and fragmentation which inturn leading to many instances of negative interaction between elephants and humans. Dhenkanal district in Odisha holds a good population of elephants. Recently, few worrying cases came into media limelight, where locals in retaliation against the crop raiding elephants surrounded elephant herds in the fast flowing water of the Brahmani River. In response, WTI field team conducted several meetings and discussion with the locals. Their concerns were noticed and they were made aware about the importance of elephants in the landscape. Ten response teams have been formulated (based in all conflict sites across Dhenkanal) who will assist FD staff for Human Elephant Conflict (HEC) mitigation. These teams are constantly monitoring the area, acting as informers for the Forest Dept. and are also involved in sensitizing their fellow villagers towards elephant conservation.

In a recent case, one of the village response teams witnessed a herd of 20 elephant near Kumushi village of Odisha, The herd was protecting a pregnant elephant that was about to deliver thus, was not moving from the area. For over 10 hours the team kept a constant vigil on the herd to protect them from any anthropogenic threat.   After the calf was born the elephants moved to a nearby hill. The team followed (through a safe distance) the herd and accorded adequate protection for three continuous days, till they moved in dense forest. Forest officials acknowledged and praised the members of the response team for this conservation effort.