GPS collars show Assam’s elephants are moving through tea gardens, farms and riverbeds

Guwahati: Assam’s elephants are moving through a far more complicated landscape than forests alone. A five-year GPS telemetry study has mapped their journeys through tea gardens, crop fields, river channels and settlements—and recorded seasonal movement across the Indo-Bhutan border.

The study by the Assam Forest Department and WWF-India tracked four female-led herds and one solitary male elephant in Udalguri, Sonitpur and Biswanath between 2021 and 2026. More than 38,000 GPS locations were collected, offering a detailed picture of how elephants use Assam’s increasingly fragmented landscape.

The findings are contained in Tracking the Giants: Movement and Habitat-Use Patterns of GPS-Collared Elephants in Assam, released in Guwahati on Monday by Environment, Forest and Climate Change Minister Jayanta Mallabaruah during Wildlife Week.

For forest managers, one of the biggest gains from the exercise is that elephant movement can now be understood in much greater detail.

“This report fills a major knowledge gap in terms of elephant presence and movement in the state,” said Vinay Gupta, Principal Chief Conservator of Forests-Wildlife and Chief Wildlife Warden.

He said the five-year study provides baseline information on elephant ranging patterns, particularly where their movements overlap with human land use, adding that the information would help strengthen conservation strategies and human-elephant coexistence measures.

Tea gardens emerge as part of the elephant landscape

The study found that Sonai Rupai, Behali and Bornadi wildlife sanctuaries remain important habitats, but tea plantations have emerged as significant secondary habitats and movement routes.

The pattern is particularly pronounced in Udalguri. The two collared herds used tea plantations extensively and, between October and January, expanded their ranges into crop fields around tea estates including Barangajuli, Dimakuchi, Paneri, Hatigarh and Orangajuli.

The detailed habitat-use figures show how dramatically elephant behaviour can change with the seasons.

Mynow, one of the collared elephants in Udalguri, was recorded in tea plantations in 41.4% of locations during the monsoon and 39.6% during the post-monsoon season. Budhini’s herd recorded an even higher use of tea plantations—88% of locations during the monsoon and 40.7% during the post-monsoon period.

In Sonitpur, the elephants stayed predominantly within forests for much of the year. But during the post-monsoon period, their movement into farmland and tea estates increased sharply. About 40% of recorded locations were in agricultural fields, 40% in forests and 20% in tea plantations, coinciding with the paddy harvest.

That seasonal shift helps explain why human-elephant conflict can intensify at particular times of the year.

Aritra Kshettry, WWF-India’s Lead for the Elephant Conservation Programme, said the telemetry work had identified both core natural habitats and secondary habitats and revealed a strong seasonal pattern in elephant movement.

“Effective management of human–elephant conflict … requires a clearer understanding of where elephants move, how they use different habitats and land-use types, and how these patterns change across seasons,” he said.

Some elephants range across hundreds of square kilometres

The GPS data also underline the extraordinary scale of elephant movement.

Some of the collared elephants had annual home ranges exceeding 500 sq km. Mynow’s annual home range was estimated at about 890 sq km, while Bishu, the solitary male tracked in Biswanath, had a range of about 947 sq km.

The elephants also used river networks as movement corridors. Bishu was found moving between Behali Wildlife Sanctuary and the Brahmaputra river islands, while other collared elephants used river channels to move north-south between the Himalayan foothills and the Brahmaputra grasslands or chaporis.

This makes roads, railway tracks and settlements particularly important in planning for elephant conservation.

The movement does not stop at the border

The collars also captured transboundary movement.

Both Udalguri herds moved into adjoining areas of Bhutan during the dry season. The report suggests that limited water availability on the Indian side may be one reason for the movement.

The finding strengthens the case for India-Bhutan coordination on elephant corridors and movement routes.

Following the elephant instead of the forest boundary

The study comes against the backdrop of a long-running human-elephant conflict in Assam.

The report records 1,468 human deaths and 337 injuries between 2000 and 2023 resulting from accidental encounters with elephants. During the same period, 626 elephants died from human-induced causes, including electrocution, poisoning and railway collisions.

The study argues that understanding where elephants move is critical because habitat loss and fragmentation have pushed them into human-use landscapes.

In Udalguri, for instance, tea plantations have become an almost annual part of the elephants’ range. The report says this requires measures to reduce accidental encounters and prevent electrocution.

For tea estates, that means wildlife management can no longer be treated as something that happens outside plantation boundaries.

The report recommends better lighting around estate settlements and adjoining roads, carefully designed energised fencing and restrictions on people approaching elephants.

It also flags the growing problem of crowds gathering around elephants, including people chasing animals for selfies, as a potentially dangerous form of human-elephant interaction.

The study’s larger message is that Assam’s elephant landscape is no longer neatly divided between forest and human habitation.

Elephants are using forests, tea gardens, farms, riverbeds and settlements as parts of one connected landscape. Their movements change with seasons, crops, water availability and the configuration of the landscape.

For Assam’s conservation planners, the GPS collars have provided something that was previously missing—a map of those movements at a much finer scale.

The challenge now is to use that map to keep the routes open while making them safer for the people and elephants sharing them.