Human Elephant Conflict in Namrup, Assam: Management Practices and Future Strategy

Assam has a high number of elephants accounting to 5719, i.e. 2nd in India (Talukdar et al., 2014). While the area available for their survival has been diminishing day by day so are their sources of Food and water. The state of Assam with small area and high population of both Elephants and Humans has seen to witness increase in the trend of Human Elephant Conflict in recent times (Zimmermann et al., 2009). Most of the cases lie in boundaries of forest reserves where the elephants come in search of food and during the encounter many a times there is loss of human life and also that of elephants (Fernando et al., 2008; Perera, 2009). Many reserves have been declared as Elephant reserve in the State for their protection but it hardly has the capacity to avail the amount of food required by the elephants. Solutions of this conflict are addressed in the form of electric fencing and relocation of the elephants to other locations. But these solutions are either not practical or are harmful to the elephants. Recent ideas of making food available to the elephants in the form of Rice and Banana have been of great solution. This solution of making food available in the Trans boundary area of the forest has been done as pilot project. This study is an insight to the trend of elephant human conflict in the state during the last 5 years and possible benefits of cultivation for elephants. Cultivation of food in the boundary of the forest would help manage the food for the elephants and thus the elephants are expected not to visit the area of inhabitants in search of food if not at least reduce the number of conflicts.