Diminishing habitat is providing these hungry, huge and highly intelligent animals with less and less of their needs. They are adapting by finding other sources of food – but these are crops relied upon for income by the farming families of Assam, India. When elephants and people compete for the same food, casualties occur on both sides. The solution is to ensure there is more forest, and therefore food, and to find clever ways to prevent the elephants from raiding crops. One way is to use trained domestic elephants (kunkis) steered by their owners (mahouts).

Funds generated from viewers votes will support anti-poaching activities and community-based 'elephant squads' that use deterrents to scare elephants away from fields and homes. Restoration of traditional migration corridors will help elephants avoid contact with humans and injured animals will be treated by vets. In an imaginative move, domestic elephants (kunki) will be trained to discourage wild elephants from leaving the forests.

All 3,000 elephants in the North Banks will benefit from these interventions. This area is also home to 97% of India's one-horned rhino population, which will also benefit.


North-east India has a landscape of lush evergreen forests and grassland which is home to species such as the greater one-horned rhino, langur, hoolock gibbon, tiger, leopard, clouded leopard, sloth bear, wild boar, water buffalo, gaur, sambar, swamp deer, hog deer and Indian muntjac. The largest population of elephants is found along the north bank of the river Brahmaputra which meanders through parts of Assam, Arunachal Pradesh, North Bengal and Bhutan.

Since 1972, nearly 14% of the area's natural forest has been lost, mainly in Assam. Land, water and other sources are shared with 75 million people, so it's not surprising that conflict between people and elephants sometimes results. Since 2001, this has resulted in the deaths of 125 humans and 70 elephants, as well as vast crop damage.