In Arunachal Pradesh, elephants are climbing higher and moving closer. A new report maps what happens next

Between December 2024 and March 2026, WWF-India and the Arunachal Pradesh forest department conducted a statewide assessment across all elephant-bearing forest divisions. The resulting document, Managing Human–Elephant Conflict in Arunachal Pradesh: A Strategy and Action Plan, establishes the state's first baseline for crop losses, property damage, and human casualties, drawn from forest department records and local consultations.

The state is an unusual place to be doing this work. Herds have been recorded at elevations above 3,000 metres, the highest known elephant presence documented anywhere in the world. An estimated 40 per cent of India's elephants live within a roughly 15,500 square mile area spanning Assam and Arunachal Pradesh — which means what happens here matters well beyond the state's borders. Between 2011 and 2021, the two states recorded 812 human and 314 elephant fatalities.

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Blocked corridors, rising casualties

Elephants in Arunachal Pradesh are not moving toward people so much as they are running out of places to go. Destruction of forests linked to hydroelectric projects and large-scale infrastructure has narrowed traditional migration corridors that herds have used for generations. Deforestation and hill earth extraction have pushed them further. With riverine grasslands, which are their preferred post-monsoon feeding grounds, increasingly cut off, elephants enter agricultural land not out of aggression but because the food they need is no longer where it used to be.

The action plan's argument is that this is not inevitable. It frames habitat connectivity as its central concern, proposing that restored corridors could reduce the pressure that pushes elephants into villages in the first place. It also proposes community-led approaches to managing shared spaces and reform of the compensation system for those who lose crops, property, or family members. The state's 14 wildlife sanctuaries, many of which remain data deficient, are identified as a starting point, places where better science could directly inform what gets protected and how.