Background

In the foothills of the Himalayas of northeast India, the North Bank Landscape is blessed with both stunning scenery and extraordinary wildlife: Bengal tigers, Asian one-horned rhinos, clouded leopards and more. Almost 10% of all the Asian elephants left in the wild live here, along with 78 million people.

A WWF study in 2004 recorded an amazing 107 plant species per 200-square-meter plot - nearly double the plant diversity found in the Amazon. The lead scientist, Dr. Andrew Gillison, called the North Bank Landscape "the jewel in the crown of Indian forests."

A serious human-elephant conflict problem
But these amazing forests are being wiped out an alarming rate and elephants, tigers and rhinos are being forced into smaller and smaller areas of forest. As a result, the North Bank has some of the most serious human-elephant conflict on the planet. This conflict has claimed the lives of dozens of people and elephants in the past 5 years.

Illegal settlers have moved into protected forest lands, leaving less room for elephants. The elephants in turn regularly leave their shrinking forests and move through human settlements to raid crops and look for other food sources. And the elephants, everyone agrees, are becoming increasingly aggressive and desperate.

In one village, a homeowner explained how most of his neighbors had given up trying to plant crops around their houses because it attracted elephants and was too dangerous.

"Fourteen years ago, there were no elephants in this area," says Mr. Thankuri, the leader of one village, which was raided by elephants several times this harvest season. "Then it increased gradually. It has now come to 150 elephants attacking this village whenever they feel there are some food grains or some vegetables in the area. We are very afraid of these elephants."

Recently, he awoke to find an elephant peering through his kitchen window, looking for food. The animal tried to push the wall of his house over, but it withstood the attack.

As he sits in his yard telling his story in a meeting with WWF staff, bicycle after bicycle is being wheeled past on the road in front of his house. Each is loaded high with wood illegally gathered in the forest near his village. The people pushing the wood-laden bicycles will sell it for firewood for a few rupees per bundle.

Our work in the region
In 2004, WWF launched a bold effort in the North Bank. During the rice paddy harvest season - when the conflict is at its worst - WWF organized 50 village-based squads and trained them in non-violent methods for keeping elephants away from their crops.

We then mobilized teams of mahouts and domesticated elephants that could drive elephants back to forested areas when they became a problem in inhabited areas. And we’re creating a plan to help the government reforest areas that have been illegally cut down and ensuring that there are forested corridors that allow elephants to move among suitable habitat without having to crash through farmers' fields. 

Already, our efforts are bearing fruit: the number of deaths of both people and elephants is a downaward trend for the first time since the 1990s. At the end of each September-January harvest season, the WWF field team expands and refines their efforts based on the lessons learned that year.