In Fact: Why trains keep killing elephants

Four elephants, including a calf, were cut down by a train in Odisha on Monday. Trains now kill 17 elephants every year on average in India. Here’s what makes the Elephas maximus so vulnerable.

It is the sovereign’s duty to protect the forests where elephants thrive, says the Manasollasa, a 12th century Sanskrit text attributed to the Western Chalukya king Someshvara III — because only the richest and widest of forests can support the large, long-ranging Elephas maximus.

Eight centuries on, the elephant still makes the biggest demands on the resources of an increasingly crowded and denuded land. And pays a heavy price as one of the worst victims of India’s development.

Most often, elephants make news when they die on rail tracks — a crushed family, rather than a single animal, makes bigger headlines; a calf or pregnant cow multiplies the outrage. Like the four elephants, including a calf, mowed down in Odisha on Monday; or the five killed in Assam this February; or the six, one of them pregnant, in Assam again, in December.

Trains have been killing elephants for a while. The Environment Ministry’s Elephant Task Force report estimated more than 100 elephants had died on the tracks during 2001-10. Many, like the recent deaths, are mass casualties — six elephants were killed in Ganjam, Odisha, in December 2012, and seven in Jalpaiguri, West Bengal, in September 2010.

The frequency and number of train kills have, in fact, been rising. The tracks between Siliguri and Alipurduar in North Bengal recorded 27 deaths between 1974 and 2002; this figure more than doubled to 65 between 2004 and 2015. Across India, average annual casualties jumped from nine during 2000-09 to 17 over the next seven years.


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