Lessons on human-elephant conflict from south Bengal
The Statesman | 24 August 2025
For countless villagers across south Bengal, the night often brings fear instead of rest—fear of an elephant herd straying into their fields, crushing the year’s harvest, toppling mud houses, or leaving behind a trail of grief.
For the elephants too, each desperate journey into human settlements is a reminder of forests lost and migration paths broken. It is this tragic conflict between survival and survival that came under the spotlight on Wednesday at Raja Narendralal Khan Women’s College (Autonomous), Midnapore, where the department of geography organised a special lecture on elephant conservation and the growing human–elephant conflict.
The discussion unfolded against a backdrop painfully familiar to rural Bengal. In districts such as West Midnapore, Jhargram, Bankura and Purulia, elephant raids have become seasonal ordeals. Paddy fields that once promised prosperity are flattened overnight, mud walls collapse under the weight of restless herds, and villagers wake to find months of toil reduced to ruin. Human lives are lost in sudden encounters, and elephants, too, fall victim to angry retaliation. What appears, at first glance, to be an invasion of villages by wild animals is, in truth, a story of habitat loss, deforestation and relentless human encroachment into forest corridors that have sustained elephant families for centuries.
Delivering the keynote address, Samir Majumdar, former assistant divisional forest officer (ADFO), spoke from his experience of three decades spent in the forests. His voice carried both the authority of experience and the ache of witnessing ecological decline. “During my 30 years in the field, I have seen how forest areas have been transformed and how elephants adapt, struggle, and sometimes suffer because of human activities,” he said. He stressed that bridging the gap between classroom learning and real-world forest experience is vital if younger generations are to grasp the complexity of conservation.
Students listened as the conversation turned from statistics to human stories. Farmers, who lose their harvest to elephant raids, often face crippling debt; families grieve not only for loved ones killed in sudden encounters but also for the animals, who are often electrocuted or beaten to death in retaliation. Conservationists warned that such cycles of suffering point to a deeper ecological imbalance. Broken migration corridors, rising human and elephant casualties, and the slow erosion of biodiversity signal an urgent need for coordinated action.
The interactive session gave students a chance to raise difficult questions—how to secure farmers’ livelihoods while protecting elephants, how to rebuild lost corridors, and how to ensure compensation schemes reach those most affected. Around 130 undergraduates and postgraduates participated, their engagement reflecting both anxiety for the present and hope for a more balanced future.
Explaining the motivation behind the initiative, Dr Pravat Kumar Shit, head of the department of geography, noted that the programme had been timed shortly after World Elephant Day (12 August). “Our objective was to create awareness among young minds about the urgent need for elephant protection and conservation. This is not only a matter of saving wildlife but also of safeguarding human well-being and ecological harmony,” he said.
The lecture closed with a call for collaboration—between villagers and forest officials, researchers and policymakers, communities and conservationists. Suggested measures included restoring safe migration corridors, establishing community-based monitoring systems, and providing fair compensation to farmers whose lives and livelihoods bear the brunt of elephant raids.