As forests shrink and herds grow, central India’s jumbo crisis is primed to spiral

Elephant attacks killed eight people in Jharkhand’s Hazaribagh district and one in West Bengal’s Paschim Medinipur district last week. In neighbouring Odisha, three women were killed and three injured in a tusker attack in Dhenkanal district the previous week. The attacks followed nearly two dozen deaths in West Singhbhum district in Jharkhand, prompting authorities to declare an “elephant emergency” last month. These incidents are part of a wider pattern. Fewer than 8% of India’s 22,446 elephants – spread across six states – are responsible for nearly half of all human-elephant conflict casualties nationwide. Most belong to nomadic herds displaced from shrinking forest habitats and forced into croplands. In fact, four of the new ‘elephant’ areas, located across central India – south Bengal, Chhattisgarh, Madhya Pradesh and Maharashtra – had negligible elephant presence till herds from the other two states, Jharkhand (then south Bihar) and Odisha, started moving in around the mid-1980s. What forced these now ‘stateless’ elephants out were a combination of natural and manmade triggers: serial droughts, rapid expansion of mining, and construction of reservoirs in south Bihar and Odisha. The outcome is that hundreds of elephants now depend solely or primarily on raiding agricultural fields, where they must compete with desperate farmers. Last year, the government’s elephant population report recorded that the central Indian landscape is fragmented due to “unmitigated mining and linear infrastructure construction” etc, which has pushed elephants to new areas, “resulting in escalating conflicts with humans”. ## Bleak outlook This deadly phase of human-elephant conflict, experts warn, is likely to intensify. Even as high-nutrient crops are boosting breeding in the crop-dependent herds, leading to a surge in numbers, the elephant population in the forests exceeds what these heavily degraded habitats can sustain. “Most herds of habituated crop-raiders have multiple calves. These new generations will have no memory of natural foraging. Nobody knows if they will stop visiting croplands if they come across good forest habitats tomorrow,” says ecologist Raman Sukumar of the Indian Institute of Science (IISc), who has worked extensively on Asian elephants. Agrees Bivash Pandav, a senior scientist at the Wildlife Institute of India (WII): “Even with a focused policy, any habitat restoration programme takes 20-40 years to make an impact. Until then, the conflict is set to spiral, unless we can restrict access of these elephants to cropland.” ## From ‘migration’ to immigration Annual to-and-fro movements between forests depending on seasonal needs is natural, what biologists describe as migration of wildlife. Most elephant herds in India used to migrate locally, driven by rainfall and foraging requirements. However, beginning the 1980s, herds of central India were increasingly denied access to their traditional migratory routes. One of the triggers was the severe drought caused by one of the 20th century’s most intense El Nino events, that scorched much of India, particularly then south Bihar, in 1982-1983 and 1986-1987. Around the same time, iron ore mines expanded rapidly in Bihar’s Singhbhum (Saranda) and Odisha’s Keonjhar and Sundargarh forests. Meanwhile, a series of reservoirs in the Mahanadi and Brahmani river basins, beginning with the Rengali Dam in 1985, drowned vast stretches of quality riverine forests. ## Eastward to Bengal The first major movement of desperate herds was eastward. In 1986, a few elephants from Jharkhand’s Dalma spent around two weeks in Bengal. The next year, a 50-strong herd stayed through the winter season. As villages in Bankura and Purulia suffered routine crop raids, the watershed moment arrived in 1993 when more than 60 elephants travelled nearly 400 km, reaching the outskirts of Kolkata. Conflict peaked in 2010s as more and more elephants started entering through the Singhbhum-Jhargram-Bankura-Purulia route from Jharkhand, and also through Kharagpur-Nayagram forests of Paschim Medinipur from Odisha, to stay put for longer periods and raid Bengal’s irrigated croplands. Now, a 200-strong population of crop-dependent elephants is spread across the Jangalmahal landscape in south Bengal. The presence of calves in many of the herds confirms regular breeding. “The fragmented forests here are mostly monocultures, interspersed with farmlands. The Forest Department is regenerating elephant fodder through joint forest management. Early results are good, but this can make a real difference only in the long term. For now, more than 200 elephants are feeding on crops,” says conservation biologist Samya Basu, who has worked on elephants in south Bengal. ## Westward to Chhattisgarh Meanwhile, in the 1990s, elephants from Odisha’s Sundargarh showed early signs of seasonal use of Chhattisgarh’s Surguja and Surajpur forests, and started raiding farmlands. Next, herds from mine-ravaged Keonjhar forests of Odisha were pushed out to Chhattisgarh’s north Jashpur. By mid-2000, as coal mines expanded in Odisha’s Talcher, Jharsuguda and Sundargarh, herds stopped returning and started breeding in Chhattisgarh. Around this time, elephants from southern Jharkhand also entered Chhattisgarh and moved to Raigarh and Dharamjaigarh forests. Over time, more than 50 elephants started using Taimur Pingla forests in Surajpur district as a permanent refuge. Then inter-state dispersal began towards the Hasdeo Arand forests, where conflict escalated during 2010-2025. But like Bengal’s Jangalmahal, the Surajpur patch cannot sustain elephants, and the herds continue to raid crops in the surrounding villages amid heightened conflict. ## Onwards To MP, Maharashtra In mid-2000, around the time a herd moved to Hasdeo Arand from northern Chhattisgarh, others ventured out to Madhya Pradesh towards Sidhi, Shahdol and Anuppur during crop season. By 2018, elephants entered Bandhavgarh tiger reserve from Anuppur through Umaria buffer forests, before moving northeast towards Sanjay-Dubri tiger reserve and further to the Sonbhadra-Mirzapur forest belt in south-eastern Uttar Pradesh. From less than 10 annual human deaths due to elephants in 2016-2017, the yearly toll crossed 20 in 2020-2021 in Madhya Pradesh. The herds damage hundreds of hectares of crop every year, raiding paddy and maize. Meanwhile, by 2010, elephants from southern Chhattisgarh’s Bastar division became regular visitors to Maharashtra’s Gadchiroli, passing through forests of Kanker, Narayanpur and Bijapur in the Indravati basin. In 2025, another tiger reserve recorded elephant presence when two tuskers entered the buffer of Tadoba-Andhari in Chandrapur, triggering panic in adjacent villages. Maharashtra suffered at least 9 human deaths between 2019 and 2024 due to elephants. Elephants thrive in areas where moisture is available for extended periods of the year – from the Western Ghats and Himalayan foothills to the Northeast. In Chhattisgarh, Madhya Pradesh and Maharashtra, elephants have entered seasonal rainfall zones not that suitable for their water and nutritious fodder needs, points out Sukumar. Also, there is an abundance of livestock here, leaving the forests overgrazed. “Instead of grassland, agricultural fields cover the valleys in forests such as Guru Ghasidas (Chhattisgarh). Elephants have to come down from the hills for water and fodder,” says Pandav. ## Pre-empting conflict Everywhere, and particularly in a thickly populated country like India, wildlife’s future depends largely on the goodwill it enjoys with people. Considered godly across the subcontinent, elephants are usually well-tolerated by communities. That is why the government’s 2025 elephant report acknowledged “the urgent need to devise policy mechanisms for uniform compensation across areas with elephant presence, prioritizing the well-being of these communities”. More importantly, the report underlined the need to “critically analyse and arrive at future strategies that will not exacerbate existing threats”. Until then, says Pandav, efforts should focus on reducing the human-elephant interface in conflict hotspots. However, there is a reluctant acknowledgement in the field that a “happy solution” to the spiralling crisis may remain elusive. Says a senior forest officer who served in one of Chhattisgarh’s most acute conflict zones: “There is no easy answer to the questions we face. How will the farmer survive total loss of harvest? What will these elephants eat if they don’t get access to farmland? And how long can we stave them off anyway?” Sukumar also calls for multi-state, landscape-level studies. “Habitat restoration is key for the elephant. For that, we need an honest policy on how much space we are going to save for the species.” Jay Mazoomdaar is an investigative reporter focused on offshore finance, equitable growth, natural resources management and biodiversity conservation. Over two decades, his work has been recognised by the International Press Institute, the Ramnath Goenka Foundation, the Commonwealth Press Union, the Prem Bhatia Memorial Trust, the Asian College of Journalism etc. Expertise and Experience Mazoomdaar’s major investigations include the extirpation of tigers in Sariska, global offshore probes such as Panama Papers, Robert Vadra’s land deals in Rajasthan, India’s dubious forest cover data, Vyapam deaths in Madhya Pradesh, mega projects flouting clearance conditions, Nitin Gadkari’s link to e-rickshaws, India shifting stand on ivory ban to fly in African cheetahs, the loss of indigenous cow breeds, the hydel rush in Arunachal Pradesh, land mafias inside Corbett, the JDY financial inclusion scheme, an iron ore heist in Odisha, highways expansion through the Kanha-Pench landscape etc. ... Read More