A conservation group in has developed a mobile app to help people in Assam state get out of the way of elephants and reduce elephant deaths on illegal electric fences.
In addition to facilitating alerts about wild elephants coming through an area, the HaathiApp, developed by conservation charity Aranyak in Assam, can also assist villagers claim state compensation following attacks.
Elephants have killed 56 people in Assam since 2014, 22 of them this year alone.
“We feel there is a mechanism required where poor villagers can apply for compensation and that is one of the main components of HaatiApp,” Aranyak’s chief elephant researcher Bibhuti Prasad Lahkar told RFI.
Haathi is the Hindi word for elephant, which is revered in India, but the animals can cause extensive damage and can be dangerous to humans.
The app can serve as an early warning system.
“Suppose one sees an elephant, he or she can then immediately alert other villagers in the area via the app,” Lahkar said, days after elephants killed two foresters and a civilian in the Assam's Sonitpur district.
Assam, which borders Bangladesh and Myanmar, is home to 5,700 elephants, the second highest population in India, after southern Karnataka state, according to a 2017 national census.
Deadly fencings
The charity hopes the early warning system and compensation can stop elephant deaths, which are often due to electrocution, in retaliation for attacks.
“People electrocute elephants in retaliation and so if we can facilitate early compensation then that will reduce electrocutions,” Lahkar said, adding that Aranyak was also trying to replace illegal palisades with safe fencing.
In the past decade, 52 of 250 elephant deaths in Assam have been due to electrocution.
Aranyak has also started alerting Assam’s forest department of high-voltage electric wires haphazardly strung by farmers.
Elephants travel great distances, and also die in collisions with running trains after straying from forest corridors, which have shrunk due to human encroachment.
App’s footprint
Aranyak plans to introduce HaathiApp in nearby Meghalaya state, which is also grappling with face-offs between humans and elephants.
Some 1,800 wild elephants there often make their way into Bangladesh.
“Expansion of human settlements and agricultural fields across Meghalaya has resulted in widespread loss of elephant habitat, degraded forage and reduced landscape connectivity,” the state of Meghalaya said in a paper published this year.
Lahkar said the Android-based app can be used anywhere in India, which is home to 60 percent of the world's Asian elephant population.
The 2017 census counted 29,964 pachyderms across 110,000 square kilometres, of which 65,000 square kilometres are state-protected elephant reserves.
Indian policies
India designated the elephant as a “National Heritage Animal” in 2010 and ensured the animal's protection, including a guarantee of safe migration routes.
However, while the domestic sale of ivory, which comes from elephant tusks, was banned in 1986, 36 years later Delhi did not vote against a proposal seeking the resumption of global trade at the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora.
India reported 90 instances of tusks and ivory seizures with 29 cases of elephant poaching between 2019 and 2022.
On Monday Prime Minister Narendra Modi underlined the elephant’s importance in India.
“We reaffirm our commitment to doing everything possible to ensure elephants get a conducive habitat where they can thrive,” he said on World Elephant Day.
“It is gladdening that over the last few years, their numbers have been on the rise” in India, Modi added.
The Geneva-based International Union for Conservation of Nature has classified Indian elephants as endangered since 1986, with their numbers declining by 11 percent over the past three decades.
