How elephants navigate India’s changing landscape

The state of Assam in northeast India is home to the second-largest Asian elephant population in India. The landscapes in Assam have rapidly transformed over the last two decades into a diverse mosaic of forests, crop fields, human settlements, and tea plantations that grow the famed Assam tea. Elephants and many other wildlife species are now finding their historical corridors and forest habitats fragmented and destroyed. This is pushing people and wildlife into closer proximity to each other, resulting in increased negative, and often dangerous interactions.

In 2021, in partnership with the Assam Forest Department, we shared our plan to fit elephants with GPS collars in key areas within the state to monitor their movement and understand important habitats, as well as the levels of conflict occurring with people, all in an effort to support informed conservation decision-making that benefits both elephants and people.

Meet the elephants

Since then, the first elephant, Tara, was collared in 2021, followed by three other female elephants over the next two years—Phul, Mynow, and Budhuni. The data collected from these collars has revealed how remarkably adaptable these elephants are, even as their habitats face increasing fragmentation and human encroachment. Most recently, in November 2024, a fifth elephant and first male, named Bishu, was collared.

By tracking the movements of these five collared elephants and their herds, we’re gaining valuable insights into how elephants navigate this fragmented landscape and how human communities respond to their presence. This knowledge will help us develop efforts to protect key habitats and movement corridors, as well as strategies to manage conflict and foster coexistence between people and elephants.

Unraveling movements

Tara and Phul

The first two collared elephants, Tara and Phul, and their herds spend much of the harvest season—from September to December—each year in Sonitpur district in northern Assam. In this area, human-elephant conflict occurs frequently during harvest season, when elephants that don’t reside year-round in these human-dominated areas arrive from parts unknown just in time to feed on the ripening rice gains. Until the collaring exercise, the biggest questions centered on why they arrive in this area during this period, where they go during other times of the year, and what the implications are of this movement on resulting human-elephant conflict.

The collar data revealed Phul and Tara’s herds spend a large part of the year (during non-harvest season time) within the relative safety of two protected areas, Nameri National Park and Sonai Rupai Wildlife Sanctuary in northern Assam. And despite the risks of navigating human-dominated landscapes during harvest season, Phul and Tara’s families make an annual southern migration to the grasslands of the Brahmaputra River islands through historically used movement routes during this time.

To avoid humans, Phul and Tara’s herds have become entirely nocturnal covering long distances as they navigate human-dominated areas and feed on crops under cover of darkness. They then spend the daylight hours either in the tea gardens or in patches of reserve forest away from people and are active within that forest patch during those hours.

The data revealed something that was never quite previously understood, which is where the elephants went when not visible in plantations and crop fields. But it also left conservationists puzzled as to why they would undertake such a risky seasonal journey if they didn’t have to. Perhaps the southern migration is a historically engrained behavior that the elephants have undertaken for generations. Maybe the grasses of the Brahmaputra River’s floodplains provide specific nutrients not found in other areas, or maybe the islands provide good cover for the elephants to hide during the day until they move to the surrounding crop fields at night. Their movement paths and collar data revealed the importance of securing the Nameri-Sonai Rupai-Arimora Chapori Corridor, through which they consistently travel, to ensure their free movement to the grasslands of the Brahmaputra River.

Mynow and Budhuni

West of Sonitpur in the Udalguri district bordering Bhutan, Mynow and Budhuni and their herds move through a similar landscape made up of forest, tea and agriculture plantations. However, a major difference between the two districts is the communities’ tolerance of elephants, which is likely a result of different local cultures and related behaviors. Sonitpur district has seen high levels of retaliatory killings through poisoning and high-voltage electric fences. While incidences of such deaths have reduced over time, the elephants are finding new ways to navigate resistance to maintain their historic connection with the Brahmaputra River. These communities tend to chase elephants away from tea gardens and other areas. On the other hand, the locals in the Udalguri district, while engaging in various methods to protect their crops, display higher tolerance for their pachyderm neighbors and rarely chase, mob, or engage in hostile behavior towards the elephants.

The communities’ higher tolerance levels of elephants can likely explain why Mynow and Budhuni will stop and forage within tea plantations, even during the day, as they don’t come across many people. Then the elephants will move between the fragmented forest patches and crop fields at night when human activity is low.

Mynow and Budhuni’s movements also showed that their herds will move across the border into neighboring Bhutan depending on the seasons. During the dry season, they will head to the lush forests of Bhutan in search of water, while remaining in India during the wet season where they can access crops and other food sources. The movement data can help the two countries better protect the elephants and their movement corridors, further underscoring the importance of transboundary conservation and collaboration.

Bishu

Initial movement data from Bishu, the male collared most recently in Biswanath District to the east of Sonitpur, showed him traveling south across an array of land use types and along a riverine corridor to the Brahmaputra River islands that are part of Kaziranga National Park. He then returned north to the reserve forest near where he was collared. In the short time since he was collared, he has already provided important data on his movements, with a bigger story to emerge over time about his use of the landscape.

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As we continue to monitor the five collared elephants and their herds, we’ll better understand how the elephants are adapting to the changing landscape and human attitudes and responses to them.

From this research, we are understanding more that elephants are modifying their behavior to survive in complex, human-dominated landscapes. Given their increasing overlaps with people, the invaluable data we are receiving from the collared individuals will enable better-informed conservation interventions that result in positive outcomes for both people and elephants.