Nagaland is undergoing rapid landscape transformation, marked by increasing forest fragmentation. As forests become increasingly fragmented, the corridors that provided vital routes for elephants to move across the northeastern landscape are getting blocked by human activities. Since the state offers one of the country’s important habitats for the Asian elephant, human-elephant conflicts are on the increase.
What is the current status and ecological functionality of interstate elephant corridors? What can be done to reduce human-elephant conflicts?
To investigate these questions, researchers at the Mizoram University, collaborated with colleagues at the Nagaland University. The researchers focused on areas inhabited by elephants. Eight of Nagaland’s seventeen districts fulfilled the criteria. Across these eight elephant-range districts, between 2021 and 2025, the team carried out a multi-stage purposive sampling.
They documented elephant movement using dung, footprints, feeding marks, trails, direct sightings and crop-raiding paths. The researchers also consulted Forest Department staff and local residents familiar with elephant activity in the area. By combining GPS locations, forest-patch continuity, habitat characteristics and information provided by local communities, the team delineated corridor boundaries.
To assess land use and habitat fragmentation around the corridors, they considered a two kilometre buffer zone on either side of each corridor centreline. Though their analysis focused on the Nagaland side of these buffers, the forests in neighbouring Assam were also mapped to assess transboundary connectivity.
The researchers identified eleven elephant corridors forming a critical network between elephant habitats in Nagaland and reserve forests and protected areas in Assam, an integral part of the broader Brahmaputra Valley elephant landscape.
Nine of these corridors remain functional, while two are currently inactive. The corridors did not show a uniform pattern of degradation. The researchers identified four distinct trajectories in the movements of the elephants: stable year-round, recovering, declining and completely inactive.
The decline and blockage of some corridors have left many elephants increasingly trapped within Nagaland. The most severe case is the complete collapse of the Baghty Valley–Nambor wildlife sanctuary corridor, which has permanently trapped an isolated resident population of about 180 elephants within Nagaland. This corridor was historically used by an estimated 100–130 migratory elephants. However, long-term encroachment into Assam’s Rengma Reserve Forest, agricultural expansion and infrastructure development, gradually severed the route. Since the late 1980s, no elephant movement through this corridor has been recorded between Nagaland and Assam. The once-migratory population has consequently become an isolated herd, separated from its traditional range in Assam.
As the trapped elephant population has grown while available habitat has shrunk, the elephants have expanded their range. This has led to an increase in human-elephant conflicts in 121 villages across four of the eight districts under study, making this one of the region’s most significant human-elephant conflict hotspots.
Local accounts from the past 30 years suggest that elephant deaths in corridor areas were far higher than those recorded officially. Most deaths were due to retaliatory shootings after repeated crop raids and property damage by elephants. Electrocution and accidental drowning accounted for relatively fewer deaths.
However, not all degraded corridors have been lost. Partially degraded corridors such as Kuhuboto–Bokajan and Doyapur–Daldali have remnant forest patches.
“Such elephant corridors can be recovered to allow elephants to move between larger habitat blocks. But community institutions and village-level decisions will have to play an important role to achieve this,” says Imnawapang Jamir, Mizoram University.
“The elephants rely on generational memory paths passed down through herds, which explains why they periodically return to historical routes after long periods of absence”, says an elder from the region.
Over the past three decades, the vegetation and landscape dynamics in Nagaland has undergone a two-phase transformation. First there was a decline in forest cover. This was followed by a greening trend as observed by satellites. The greening trend was not due to the recovery of native, structurally intact forests, but due to commercial agriculture such as rubber, tea, areca nut, teak, and agar cultivations.
“Satellite vegetation indices alone can be misleading indicators of habitat quality when commercial monocultures replace native forest ecosystems. Ground truth needs to be verified,” says Moanungsang Imchen, Nagaland University.
The researchers offer state officials the first scientifically mapped inventory of all 11 interstate corridors, providing a foundation for joint monitoring, evidence-based policy, and transboundary landscape planning. These field-verified spatial maps give village authorities the precise data needed to identify critical migration bottlenecks on their lands and make informed decisions on land-use planning.
“By integrating habitat restoration, sustainable land-use planning and community-led conservation, Nagaland has the opportunity to establish a nationally significant model of decentralised elephant corridor management”, says Shri Kant Tripathi, Mizoram University.
Environmental and Sustainability Indicators 32: 101495 (2026):
DOI: 10.1016/j.indic.2026.101495
Reported by Sanghamitra Deobhanj
Freelance science writer, Cuttack
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