Theses and Dissertations

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    Ecology and ranging behaviour of Elephants, Elephas maximus, and its implications for managing human-elephant conflict in Chhattisgarh, India
    (Wildlife Institute of India, Dehradun, 2022) Lakshminarayanan, N.; Pandav, Bivash
    In the East-central region of India that supports the smallest regional elephant (Elephas maximus) population, the elephant ranges have expanded in northern Chhattisgarh (erstwhile eastern Madhya Pradesh) since late 1980s. Chhattisgarh was carved out of Madhya Pradesh during the year 2000, and thence, the State has been witnessing elephant range expansion and concomitant population growth resulting in acute human–elephant conflict. Over 60 human lives are lost every year due to human–elephant conflict, and the trend is only increasing. Chhattisgarh scenario represents challenges facing management of elephant populations undergoing environmental dispersals that typically result from saturated habitat conditions in the elephant home ranges. In response to the prevailing conflict situation, the study aimed to understand facets of elephant ecology and aspects of human–elephant conflict to generate management perspectives. Historic information available as fragments in literature indicates that elephant distribution in the whole of East-central region was marked by both range expansions and local extinctions during the last one century. In particular, the contemporary phenomenon of elephant range redistribution in the East-central region peaked after 1980s, and coincides with large-scale human-induced disturbances to the formerly intact elephant habitats in the region. There were also pull factors like creation of pseudo-habitats (providing only cover for elephants) through forestry operations that possibly attracted elephants to human–dominated areas perpetuating human-elephant conflict. In Chhattisgarh, the elephant distribution during the period 2012 to 2017 was reported from 16 Forest Divisions and four Protected Areas in the north and north-central regions of the state. The elephant population, as enumerated by Chhattisgarh Forest Department during 2021, ranged from 250 to 300.
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    Landscape level modeling of Asian Elephant (Elephas Maximus) habitat, Its population and interaction with humans in Nepal
    (Wildlife Institute of India, Dehradun, 2021) Ram, Ashok Kumar; Pandav, Bivash; Mondon, Samrat; Subedi, Naresh; Ram, Babu
    The nature and extent of human-elephant conflicts studied in Chitwan National Park and Parsa National Park complex (CNP & PNP) and its buffer zone in Nepal shows that crop damage and human casualties were more serious conflict issues among the other concerns of human–elephant conflict.
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    Ecological investigation of human-elephant conflicts in south-west Bengal.
    (Wildlife Institute of India, Dehradun, 2006) Singh, Anil Kumar; Chowdhury, Sushant
    Human-elephant conflicts- perspective in Asia and Africa: a review” contains an account of human elephant conflicts and its negative interactions both for elephant and humans in Asia and Africa. This provides an illustrative account of sources of human elephant conflicts and different forms of negative interactions resulting damage to agriculture and plantations, damage to property, human kill and injuries, impact on ecosystems, killing of elephants and diseases transmissions. The modes of conflict management through ecological approach, habitat improvement, alternate crop strategies, deterrent, repellents and aversion, physical and pulsating barriers, acoustic deterrents and compensatory measures as adopted in Africa and Asia on both the genus of elephants are discussed and reviewed.
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    Abundance and social organization of male Asian elephants (Elephas maximus) in Rajaji Tiger Reserve
    (Wildlife Institute of India, Dehradun, 2024) Madhusudanan, Abhimanyu; Pandav, Bivash; Lakshminarayan, N.; Mondol, Samrat
    1. Asian Elephants are complex, social, and polygynous mammals living in fission-fusion societies. Male elephants are known to alternate between leading solitary lives, in all-male groups or associating with mixed-sex herds. All-male groups allow younger males to learn from older males, test strengths and spar with their peers. While much work has been done on female Asian elephant societies, studies focused on male association patterns are limited, but gaining importance in the light of human-elephant conflicts. In this study, I estimated the abundance of adult male elephants in a stretch of forest spanning over 40 km along the east bank of the river Ganga in Uttarakhand using a polygon search-based spatially explicit capture recapture (SECR) framework 2. I invested a survey effort of ~3014 km to estimate the abundance of the adult male segment of the population using a capture-recapture framework. Using a combination of morphological features, I identified 34 adult males from 124 elephant sightings. Association patterns of the male elephants, following behavioural sampling approaches were also recorded during the surveys. 3. Adult male elephant density was 0.05 (SE=0.01)/km2, and a derived abundance of 40 (SE=1.4) for the 475 km2 study area. This demonstrates that polygon search-based SECR is an effective approach in estimating elephant abundance.
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    Assessing the Efficacy of Select Physical Barriers in Mitigating Human-Elephant Conflict in the Human-Elephant Shared Landscape of Golaghat District, Assam
    (Wildlife Institute of India, Dehradun, 2021) Das, Gitima; Gopi, G.V.
    Human-Elephant Conflict (hereafter “HEC”) is one of the most challenging issues both for elephant conservation and people’s wellbeing in the elephant landscapes. Management of which becomes extremely difficult without the implementation of appropriate mitigation measures. Physical barriers, like solar fences, elephant-proof trenches, stone, or rubble walls are installed as mitigation measures in all elephant-occupied habitats at the edge of the forest and human-use areas, globally. However, installations of the same without a proper scientific rationale and assessing and analysing their site-specific efficacy in reducing elephant incursion in the human settlement areas often fail in doing its intended objectives. It is important to note that humans are also a crucial component of conflict, hence research focusing on social aspects are essential for finding solutions. Keeping such concepts in mind, an assessment to determine the efficiency of two types of physical barriers, viz., solar fence and elephant-proof trench (EPT) was carried out in one of the prime elephant habitats of north-eastern India, in Golaghat district of Assam. Located on the southern bank of the Brahmaputra and home to Kaziranga National Park (KNP) on the west and Nambor-Doigurung Wildlife Sanctuary (NDWLS) in the south, Golaghat offers an ideal site for such study. It is realized that even after the presence of barriers in various areas of the district, conflict cases in the form of crop-raiding, human mortalities and human deaths continue to be reported. Handful studies on barriers and their effectiveness were done recently on the northern bank of Brahmaputra. However, no such appraisal on efficiency of barriers has been done in this landscape, where conflict levels are high. Hence, this study attempted to fill these existing research gaps.
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    Assessment of Human-Elephant Conflicts in Jalpaiguri District of West Bengal in Relation to Land-Use Patterns
    (Wildlife Institute of India, Dehradun, 2003) Roy, Anirban Datta; Goyal, S.P.; Sathyakumar, S.
    This study on Human Elephant Conflict was conducted in Jalpaiguri district .of north West Bengal to identify the level of conflicts in different areas of the district, and to recognize it in connection with land-use patterns existing in the district. The study was conducted over five months and information on conflicts was collected from Tea Gardens and Wildlife Squads. Interviews and questionnaires were also used to survey the conflict affected viilages. The different conflict areas and the intensity of the conflicts in those areas were identified with the help of gridded maps. Results showed that although most of the conflict areas had remained the same from previous studies, some new conflict areas were also emerging. Seasonality of the conflicts was also found to be related to cropping patterns adopted. Information collected from the Tea gardens showed that the Tea gardens which had previously been categorized as high conflict areas had remained same to a great extent. The Tea gardens having the highest conflict incidences were frequented more by solitary animals rather than herds. The mean group size of the herds were found to show two distinct peaks in the months of May-June and September-November. Interviews with affected villagers provided a true picture of the difficulties faced by them during crop-raiding. In the absence of Wildlife Squads, villagers had to drive the elephants away with their own methods.