6th March 2019

A 10-year study of elephant attacks on humans in three north Bengal districts has revealed half of the incidents occurred after dusk when victims were returning home or were drunk and chasing elephants.

The study by scientists at the Wildlife Institute of India, Dehradun, also suggested the human-elephant conflicts was less related to abundance of the animal and more to changes in landscape.

The scientists said Darjeeling, Jalpaiguri and Cooch Behar districts had an elephant population of 488, or 1.8 per cent of India’s 2017 estimate of 27,312 elephants. But, the study said, the districts had 12 per cent of human fatalities from elephant attacks.

“These figures tell us changes in the landscape and human presence influence the severity of human-elephant conflict more than the density of elephants,” said S Sathyakumar, a senior WII scientist who led the study published in the journal PLOS ONE.

Sathyakumar and his colleagues analysed the circumstances and geographical distribution of 476 deaths and 1,646 injuries caused by elephants in the three districts between 2006 and 2016. They found that 50 per cent of the attacks occurred between 6pm and midnight.

Read full story here