In Central India, community trackers are searching for signs of elephant activity and feed their findings into an app that alerts people in nearby villages that they may be in danger from hungry elephants whose habitat has increasingly come in conflict with human uses.
The trackers, who call their team “friends of the elephant,” look for tracks, dung, or the sounds of elephants on the move and enter the information in the app, developed by an Indian firm. There are an estimated 50,000 elephants remaining in India.
The usually shy animals are coming into increasing contact with humans because of rapidly expanding settlements and growing forest disturbance, including mining operations for coal, iron ore, and bauxite. That has led to conflict; in 2023-24 629 people were killed by elephants across India.
The program, which is being used now in the Chhattisgarh area, which in past has accounted for 15% of deaths by elephant although it has only 1% of the elephant population. Since the program started in February 2023, authorities say, there has been only one death.
