In January 2019, a group of four male elephants walked onto the traffic laden Nandi Infrastructure Corridor Enterprises (NICE) expressway (https://www.deccanherald.com/city/tuskers-crossing-nice-road-711470.html), risking not only their own lives but also that of the numerous unsuspecting commuters.
A number of pet theories, from age-old migratory routes being destroyed to how humans are encroaching upon elephant inhabited forests, started doing the rounds. We spent no time, however, to understand the actual set of events surrounding elephant sociality and larger landscape-level changes that may have resulted in this drastic measure taken by elephants to come onto NICE road.
This project aims to do that by highlighting the potential impacts of land use change on elephants, an icon of conservation efforts. We focus on human-elephant conflict in and around urban habitats, and provide guidelines for agriculture and infrastructure development and town planning in regions that are close to elephant habitats. Through this document, we also hope to make policy-makers more receptive towards the elephant use of this already fragile forest habitat of southern India.
To assess environmental and biological factors influencing the current foraging and ranging decisions by elephants in the peri-urban areas of Bengaluru city.
To assess current trends in elephant distribution and human-elephant conflict in the districts of Bengaluru, Ramanagara, Tumakuru and Krishnagiri and to identify human-elephant conflict hotspots.
To develop predictive models of human-elephant conflict, given future trends in landuse change in Bengaluru city, including Tumakuru, Ramanagara and Kanakapura towns based on the Master Plan 2031 of Government of Karnataka and the identification of Hosur as a special investment region by the Government of Tamilnadu.
To generate guidelines that can act as a policy document to help urban development in regions co-habited by elephants.
We developed an algorithm and framework of an agent-based model, a model used to simulate the actions and interactions of autonomous agents to assess their effects on the system as a whole, that will predict human-elephant conflict based on current and future trends in landuse change. To parametrise the model, we analysed the environmental and biological factors influencing the foraging and ranging patterns of individual elephants. This is based on ten years of data on elephant movement patterns and crop conflict in the peri-urban areas of Bengaluru.
Over the coming months, we will run the model for current and future scenarios of landuse. Based on the results, and by comparisons of movement patterns and conflict between the current and future scenarios, we will generate a policy document guiding urban development in regions co-habited by elephants.
