Assessing the Efficacy of Select Physical Barriers in Mitigating Human-Elephant Conflict in the Human-Elephant Shared Landscape of Golaghat District, Assam

Abstract

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.