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Human-elephant conflict has been reported from Orissa for a long time. In recent years, it has been reported that owing to the vast increase in mining activities in the northern districts of Orissa: Keonjhar, Mayurbhanj, Sundergarh, Deogarh and Angul, the amount of conflict has increased. Added to this, is the fear that climate-driven vegetational changes will exacerbate the conflict even more. In the second phase of this effort, FERAL was involved in mapping fire-prone areas in Northern Orissa and assessing the extent to which this affected elephant crop raiding, and their conflict with humans.
This study was geared to analyse the different factors that might affect human-elephant conflict in this area, as well as to make policy recommendations.
Specifically, we undertook to map elephant movement and areas of NTFP collection and investigate crop raiding patterns in the study area.
- Repeated burning of forests for NTFP collection has resulted in almost no undergrowth in most of the Sal forests observed. Therefore, there is no forage available for the elephants, and their use of the forest is limited to sheltering there during the day.
- As the closest food resource in most cases are agricultural fields, they resort to crop raiding. We hope to validate this in the coming year.