According to Project Elephant data, Assam’s elephant population of 5,524 in 1993 has gone down to 5,246 in 2002, an alarming decrease of 278 in nine years at over 30-a-year. Meghalaya, another major bastion of the pachyderm, fared worse – from a population of 2,872 in 1993 to 1,868 in 2002, which is a staggering loss of over a thousand in less than a decade.

Arunachal Pradesh, another elephant country, suffered a similar fate, as its population plummeted from 2,102 in 1993 to 1,607 in 2001, which is a shocking 500 deaths in just eight years. Nagaland, as per the 2002 census has just 145 elephants left from its 1980 figure of 256. Tripura, Manipur and Mizoram have too few elephants left to merit any mention.

While poaching for ivory has been an age-old problem, the past one decade has seen an alarming rise in the man-elephant conflict – thanks to rampant destruction of forest cover and fragmentation of elephant habitats. This has had a disastrous consequence for the elephants, as whenever they happen to raid cropland and human settlement in search of food, they fall victim to poisoning, gunshot, electrocution, and even spears and bows and arrows. A number of human lives too have also been lost, and this has embittered the traditional goodwill that used to characterize the human-elephant relation in the State.

But more than poaching, it is the fatalities from the intensifying man-elephant conflict, besides accidents (which often takes place when elephants stray out due to habitat loss), that has emerged as the bigger threat to the depleting elephant population over the last decade.

In the past decade, the North East accounted for 90 per cent of the elephant poisoning cases, 30 per cent of electrocution deaths and 60 per cent cases of elephants run over by trains, besides 20 per cent of elephant poaching cases. As many as 20 elephants died of mass poisoning in Sonitpur district in 2001, the worst case of elephant poisoning ever.

Significantly, the North East also accounts for 43 per cent of the human deaths caused by elephants. Sonitpur district of Assam, which has been the worst affected by the man-elephant conflict, witnessed a record loss of forest cover during the last decade. The ongoing plundering by an elephant herd in Golaghat district is a direct fallout of the growing human interference in an elephant corridor of the Kaziranga-Karbi Anglong Elephant Reserve near Numaligarh.

The Barail-Saiphung range on Assam-Meghalaya border, declared an Elephant Reserve in 1991, has been derecognized now, as it has got very few elephants left.

Poaching took a heavy toll on the elephant population of the Manas National Park during the 1990s and the early part of this millennium, when the protected area was hit by a prolonged social unrest. “At least 200 elephants must have perished in the last ten years in Manas,” Dr Anwaruddin Choudhury, noted conservationist says.

“Protecting the existing forests and the elephant corridors is a must if we are to save the State’s remaining elephant population,” Dr Choudhury says, adding that encroachment on the corridors needed to be cleared immediately. “Elephants require a lot of space to move, and disturbance in their natural corridors has led to confrontations with humans,” he says.

According to the Chief Conservator of Forests (Wildlife), MC Malakar, the worsening situation called for both short-term and long-term measures. “Apart from short-term measures like anti-depredation drives using domesticated elephants, power fencing, crop-damage compensation, etc., we need to take long-term measures in the form of forest cover protection, encroachment clearance, and restoration of elephant corridors,” he said.

On paper, the North East has 37 per cent of the country’s elephant habitats and 35 per cent of the recorded corridors. But much of those now lie degraded and fragmented. It also has nine of the 25 Elephant Reserves, and 16 of the 64 national parks and sanctuaries harbouring elephants.