Trying to avoid an elephant stampede? There’s an app for that

CNN —

Conflict between elephants and humans is a growing, and potentially deadly, problem in some parts of India. Now, the state of Assam, a northeastern region famous for its rolling tea plantations, has launched a mobile app that alerts villagers of approaching herds in an effort to reduce the risk of catastrophic encounters.

While estimates vary, such conflicts in the state led to more than 200 elephant deaths and 400 human deaths from 2017 to 2022, according to data from Aaranyak, a local conservationist group that developed the “Haati App” or “Elephant App” in collaboration with the Assam government.

The app is designed to give villagers and farmers a vital heads-up when wild elephants are close to human settlements, aiming to help people avoid dangerous encounters.

“Fueled by a combination of a population boom and poverty, man has expanded his frontiers, while animals have found their jungles shrinking,” said Aaranyak, which in Sanskrit means “to belong to the forest.”

Assam is home to over 5,000 wild elephants, the second highest in the country after Kerala in the southwestern tip of India, which has around 6,000, according to a 2017 report by the Ministry of Environment, Forests & Climate Change.

Fewer than 50,000 Asian elephants are left in the world, and they are listed as endangered species on the International Union for Conservation of Nature’s (IUCN) Red List. Indian elephants are a subspecies of Asian elephants native to the country, and there are about 40,000 left in the wild, according to the World Wide Fund for Nature (WWF).

While India has over 100 national parks and around 30 elephant reserves, many of these animals are losing their natural habitats due to increased farming and human activities,