Text Messaging Helps Elephants and People Coexist | National Geographic

You know India has the highest number of Asian elephants, and there are millions of people living very close to or within the elephant landscapes. Between 1994 and 2015, 41 people lost their lives in direct encounters with elephants because people didn't know that there were elephants, so they were unaware of elephant presence. The Wai landscape is primarily a tea and coffee dominated landscape, but it is surrounded by large batches of protected areas, wildlife sanctuaries, and tiger reserves.

We have about 70,000 people residing in the Valpar region, about 220 square kilometers, and they're all scattered. They're not living together in small clusters. There, you'll see a group of six families living in one place; a kilometer away, you'll see another group of six families. In between that, they have left certain forest patches, you know, without converting them into tea. They provide food sources for elephants, and they serve as halting stations for elephants when they are actually moving through these open areas of tea.

Historically, the plateau has been used by elephants to move across these plantations to go into surrounding protected areas. So, when they are actually moving through these tea plantation areas, that's where they come into contact with people. That's where an early warning could really help people to avoid these surprise encounters.

So, what we notice is that if we can develop an elephant information network here, we can have a better way of safeguarding people's lives. Most of the people who work in the estates have mobile phones these days. We update people about elephant presence through bulk messages, sending out text messages telling them where elephants are.

We have a team of four people; they track elephants every day. The moment we have information about where all the elephants are in the landscape, we send out messages. This has actually developed a kind of network system. Think of it this way: there are 70,000 people, which means that 140,000 eyes, so elephants can't escape these eyes.

We also keep basically up to date with which herds are moving about, but we also look at communicating this information to the people. It could be people who are working in the estates, the management, or the forest department—just to keep everybody updated about where the elephants are in their regions, so they don't accidentally encounter these elephants.

So that bush area, you know, before we started, an average of three people used to die per year. Now, it has come down to one. If the same average had continued, there would have been 19 more people who lost their lives in this landscape. Addressing the safety of people is a primary issue. We definitely need to look at the avenues that can actually facilitate coexistence between people and elephants.