India lost 200 elephants in train accidents in 10 years: Wildlife SOS

Mumbai: Ahead of World Elephant Day on August 12, the Wildlife SOS said that India lost at least 200 elephants in train collisions between 201-2020, or on average, 20 pachyderms run or knocked over on tracks.

India is home to more than half the world's Asian Elephant population, but these majestic animals are facing an epidemic as large as their size -- accidents and mortalities, caused by train collisions -- in several states where they abound.

The Wildlife SOS said that the Indian Railways spans 1,30,000 km of tracks across the country and there are around 150 elephant corridors spread in India.

A majority of the railway lines run through the vital elephant corridors, cutting the forest habitats in half and causing risks to the huge creatures.

"This fragmentation of habitat has made it difficult for the world's largest land animals to navigate their homes properly," the Wildlife SOS expressed concerns today.

It has cited examples of train accidents like December 2023 when an adult female elephant was killed while her female calf was left paralysed in her two hind limbs after a train hit in Haldwani in Uttarakhand, but the state's forest department officials managed to rescue her on time.

The calf, named Bani, is currently under treatment at the Wildlife SOS Elephant Hospital in Mathura.

Her condition has prompted the organisation to launch an online petition to the Indian Railways to implement measures to protect this iconic species by reducing train speeds and implementing the latest technology to prevent such collisions on railway tracks in sensitive areas.

Wildlife SOS top brass Kartick Satyanarayan, Geeta Seshamani and Baiju Raj MV, said they have targeted 30,000 signatures to the petition to the Indian Railways, highlighting the serious threats to elephant habitat fragmentation and to help conserve the wild elephant population in the country.

The four south Indian states of Karnataka, Kerala, Tamil Nadu and Andhra Pradesh together account for nearly 44 per cent of the total Indian elephant population in the wilds, estimated at over 27,000.

The other major states with high elephant numbers are -- Assam, Arunachal Pradesh, Meghalaya, Odisha, Uttarakhand, West Bengal, Chhattisgarh, Nagaland, Tripura and Uttar Pradesh.