Elephant Crop Raiding and Railways Traffic: Temporal Determinants of Elephant-train Collisions in Eastern Karbi Anglong, India

Asian elephant is one of the endangered species in the world. Of late, India witnesses elephant-train collision incidences frequently that resulted in more than 200 elephant deaths in last three decades. As most of the accidents occurred during dusk-night-dawn time period, this study assessed a case of elephant-train collision incidences in reference to diurnal and monthly patterns of elephant crop raiding and railways traffic volume during September-November, 2016 in eastern Karbi Anglong, a hill district of Assam. It evidenced that there was a significant variation of traffic volume (Skewness = -0.89; kurtosis = -0.04; W = 0.86, P<0.05) during dusk-night-dawn (DND) time period. Particularly, a significant difference of traffic volume was observed between day time and DND time {t (13) = 2.35, P<0.05} in the collision incidence month September, 2016. The regression models indicated that distance from crop depredation incidents to the railway line (distance) and the size of damaged crop fields (SDCF) were the strong determinants of elephant-train collisions in the given area. The study provides a crucial insight on elephant-train collisions to develop mitigation strategies for such incidences.