Elephants are among the flagship species of conservation. They live in a variety of habitats and landscapes. Apart from that, elephants were also kept in captivity. Only about 20 per cent of the elephant’s range lies in national parks and sanctuaries. With forests thinning out, the rest 80 per cent of the elephants in most parts of the country have dispersed into areas with high density of human population. HEC forms a grave threat for both sides i.e. animals as well as humans. Reports pointed out that around 300 people were killed annually in India due to human elephant conflicts. The common causes for this includes crop raiding which was the result of habitat loss and forest fragmentation due to human intrusion. It was reported that around 40-50 elephants were killed during crop raiding in India. Another contributor to it is lethal retaliation against elephants. It was reported that more than 60 elephants were found dead in retaliation incidents in North East India and Sumatra in 2001, which was poisoned by the plantation workers. The conflict intensifies when people try to chase away the animals with searchlights, crackers or guns, making the pachyderms even more aggressive.

1. STRATEGIES ADOPTED TO
MITIGATE HUMAN–ELEPHANT
CONFLICT (HEC) IN AND
AROUND KERALA FORESTS
Subin K.Mohan, Assistant
Professor, Department of
Veterinary & AH Extension,
CVAS, Pookode.
subinkmohan@gmail.com,
9895900936

2. Introduction
• Elephants are
among the flagship
species of
conservation.
• They live in a variety
of habitats and
landscapes.
• Elephants were also
kept in captivity.

3. Contd..
• Only about 20
per cent of the
elephant’s range
lies in national
parks and
sanctuaries.
• With forests
thinning out, the
rest 80 per cent
of the elephants
in most parts of
the country have
dispersed into
areas with high
density of human
population.

4. Contd..
• HEC forms a grave threat for both sides i.e.
animals as well as humans.
• Reports pointed out that around 300 people
were killed annually in India due to human
elephant conflicts.

5. Contd..
• The common causes:
• A) crop raiding (around 40-50 elephants were
killed during crop raiding in India).
• B) lethal retaliation (more than 60 elephants
were found dead in retaliation incidents in
North East India and Sumatra in 2001).
• The conflict intensifies when people chase the
animals with searchlights, crackers or guns.

6. Factors that contributes to HECs
Social & Habitat factors
• Elephants live in matriarchal societies.
• A population or sub-population could be composed of several clans
and independent males.
• Clans have well defined home ranges and show strong fidelity to these
ranges.
• Clans are likely to leave their home ranges only when exposed to
severe stress such as extreme droughts, severe poaching,
overpopulation, severe human disturbance, or when the habitat within
a home range is lost or highly degraded.
• While bulls appear to raid crops solely and more frequently than herds,
the damage caused by female herds is greater than that caused by
bulls.
• But recent reports says that a behavioural change had been noticed in
bulls which form groups while crop raiding and other activities and this
results in more lethality and financial loss.

7. Human factors
• Includes legal issues, changing perceptions,
intolerance, poor crop protection measures and
lack of awareness.
• The responsibility of managing HEC falls on
various stakeholders (i.e. government, farmers,
communities, companies, NGOs, etc.) to
cooperatively work to address HEC.

8. Strategies adopted to mitigate HEC in
and around Kerala forests
• Traditional methods:
• Habitat fragmentation:
• Protection of Elephant corridors:
• Afforestation and alternate cropping:
• Kumki elephant squads:
• Information and Communication Technologies (ICTs):
 A) Electical Geofensing:
 B) Elephant image detection system (EIDS)
 C) Automatic Repelling System
 D) Seismic sensors:
 E) Intrusion detection system using geophones
• Developing Infrastructural facilities
• Compensation:
• Using alternate methods like pheromones

9. Traditional methods
• Fencing
• Noise-making
• Drum beating
• Use of fire crackers, light
smoke
• Buzzing of the bees.
• Red hot chilly powders.
• Construction of ditches, moats, walls, barricades
and other elephant barriers.

10. Habitat fragmentation
This plan divides elephant habitats into three zones
1) areas with forest cover sufficient enough to
conserve elephants
2) habitats where humans and animals will co-exist
3)“elephant removal zones” in agricultural areas.
In the agricultural areas, the plan envisages
capturing the animals and removing them to
other forest areas, and if that fails, keeping some
of the animals in captivity.

11. Protection of Elephant corridors
• All-important elephant corridors in the entire
Western Ghats have been broken and disfigured
over the years by human settlements and
rampant encroachment leading to mindless
construction.
• Due to this the elephants unable to move around
from one habitat to another.
• Appropriate measures have been taken by the
Forest department to evacuate these
encroachments.

12. Afforestation and alternate cropping
• Climatic variation resulted in depletion of ground water as well
as raiding by wild animals in human settlements in search of
water and food, contributed the major share of human animal
conflicts.
• Unscientific plantation of eucalyptus trees in the forest fringes in
the last two decades has also contributed in depletion of the
ground water.
• Forest department, Government of Kerala (GOK), took efforts to
plant fruit bearing trees and dig water holes in core areas of the
forest. Walayar forest range had already raised 5000 saplings of
jackfruit, mango, papaya and Njaval in two nurseries.
• Alternate cropping could be adopted like flower cultivation in
Moolihole forest buffer zone near Gundalpett or bamboo grass
to preserve that border horticultural and agricultural fields of
Tamil Nadu

13. Kumki elephant squads
• Domesticated and trained ‘Kumki’ elephants
and their mahouts had been employed to
drive away the wild elephants

14. Information and Communication
Technologies (ICTs)
Nature Conservation Foundation Model at Sultan
Bathery.
• A 24-hour SMS alert centre.
• Apart from texts, the team is communicating
through LED boards installed in various villages.
• Mobile-operated ‘red alert’ indicators to guide
those without phones, such as schoolchildren, and
they have been fully operational since 2013.
• Special vehicles equipped with gadgets to warn,
intervene or provide prompt help ahead of an
impending encounter have also been
deployed. (Athul Gupta, 2017)

15. Electical Geofensing
• When an elephant with a collar passes
through the virtual barrier, an SMS message is
sent to the wildlife management center, along
with GPS coordinates of the elephant.
• Rangers in a vehicle can then intercept the
elephant and chase it off of the property.

16. Elephant image detection system
(EIDS)
• Developed by S. J. Sugumar and R.
Jayaparvathy:
• The elephant’s image captured in
the forest border areas and would
be sent to a base station using an RF
network.
• The received image is decomposed
using Haar wavelet to obtain
multilevel wavelet coefficients, with
which image feature extraction and
similarity match between the
elephant query image and the
database image using image vision
algorithms could be performed.
A GSM message is sent
to the forest officials
about that elephant.

17. Automatic Repelling System
• Developed by Gayathri et al.
• An automated system for identification of elephant
using piezoelectric vibrating sensor which were
deployed in three layers to identify the presence of
elephants.
• The first outer layer gives the warning signal to alert
the people around that area, middle layer activates the
first repelling system to make the elephants run back
to the forest and if the elephant is still moving forward
towards the conserved area, the third layer activates
the second repelling system.
• As the sensors are deployed in a cyclic manner, it can
easily divert the elephant’s attention and thereby the
HEC can be avoided.

18. Seismic sensors
• The seismic signals generated by the movement
and other sounds made by the elephants are
received by a system and is transmitted to the
central processor along with the GPS position of
the receiver node.
• This would be matched with the database
patterns.
• On match of a stored pattern, the system
generates a SMS to forest authorities.
• This system was developed by Prabhu, M.

19. Intrusion detection system using
geophones
• Developed by Hemalatha et al.
• Geophones were used to converts motion of
elephants into electrical signals when
elephants enter into the forest border areas
and an early warning through SMS is sent to
the nearby forest officials and also to owner of
the crop field.

20. Developing Infrastructural facilities
• Constructing toilets in the region so that
villagers don’t have to defecate in the open
and accidentally bump into an elephant.

21. Compensation
• Since 2013, the numbers of deaths due to elephant
attacks in the state have been close to 20 every year.
• Twenty two deaths have occurred in 2016-17 with
the forest department giving away 9.63 crores as
compensation, the highest in almost a decade.
• Compensation acts as a support for the affected.

22. Pheromones
• Since bulls are drawn to females in heat, the
pheromone could possibly be used to steer
rogue elephants away from crops and villages
and destruction.

23. Conclusion
• Human-animal conflict cannot be fought with
hard and fast rules.
• Try to understand the loss of the stakeholder.
• Evolve better ways to understand the needs of
the animals with the participation of the
stakeholders.
• More researches should be focussed in this
arena.

24. Bibliography
• Athul Gupta, 2017. Giving Elephants the Space They Need, One SMS at a
Time. https://thewire.in/129142/elephants-bengal-deaths-kerala-drought
• Balasubramanian, M., Baskaran, N., Swaminathan S., and Desai, A.A.
(1995). Crop raiding by Asian elephant (Elephas maximus) in the Nilgiri
Biosphere Reserve, South India. In: A Week with Elephants (J.C. Daniel and
H.S. Datye, eds.), pp. 350-367. Bombay Natural History Society, India:
Oxford University Press.
• Forest Survey of India. (1999). The State of Forest Report, Ministry of
Environment and Forests, India.
• Gayathri. R., Sheela Sobana Rani ,R. Lavanya.2017. An Automatic Repelling
System to Reduce Human Elephants Conflicts Using Sensors. Int. J.
Research in Applied Scin. Eng. Tech. Vol 5 Issue V. pp 528-532
• Hemalatha, R. Kanmani, T. , Keerthana, C. , Ponlatha, S. and Selvamani, I.
2016. Detection And Prevention Of Elephants Intrusion Into Crop Fields
Near Forest Areas. Int.J. Inno.Res. Tech., Sci. & Eng. Volume – 2, Issue –
6.pp 115-120
• Prabhu, M. 2016. An Efficient Surveillance System To Detect Elephant
Intrusion Into Forest Borders Using Seismic Sensors. Int. J. .Adv. Eng. Tech.
Vol. 7. Issue I. pp 166-171
• S. J. Sugumar and R. Jayaparvathy.2014. An Improved Real Time Image
Detection System for Elephant Intrusion along the Forest Border Areas.
The Scientific World J. Volume 2014 (2014), 10 pages