Human-elephant conflict risks in the forest-dominated areas of West Bengal, India

The problem of human-elephant conflict (HEC) now appears to be one of the greatest challenges in the forest-based mouzas of West Bengal as well as in India. As per the field survey from 2018–2019 to 2020–2021, a total of 277 (16.55%) and 920 (4.21%) mouzas were identified as HEC-affected out of 1674 and 21,832 recognized mouzas in Northern and Southern parts of West Bengal, respectively. Here, the destruction of crops, huts, death and injury of human, livestocks, and even elephants have been increased year after year. Crop-raiding incident is the most common problem among all that occurs during the milky stage and harvesting stage of paddy. Numerous studies have been carried out showing the pattern of HEC incident in some areas of West Bengal, but none of them have tried to identify the HEC risk depending upon crop-raiding incident in this state. Here, it has been tried to examine the mouza-wise HEC risk based on crop-raiding incident in the stated two parts of West Bengal. Two important parameters, the number of crop fields raided and the total number of crop fields present but not raided, were taken into consideration to measure the HEC risk. The result shows that the Jhargram (0.75–0.98), Medinipur (0.68–0.89), and Rupnarayan (0.68–0.89) forest divisions are the highest HEC risk areas in West Bengal. The most dominant factor as determined from the principal component analysis is the lack of fodder and other biological requirements that are one of the basic needs for survival of the elephants within the forest (0.864). The total risk for raiding crop is 3.21 and 2.93 in the two parts of West Bengal. Here, the paddy and vegetables fields are more prone to be raided. Moreover, descriptive statistics were also used to explain the patterns of crop-raiding incidents. The findings may provide a way out for the sustainable management of HEC risk like establishment of micro-habitat, creation of elephant proof trench/electric fences, and rapid plantation of indigenous plant species in the vacant forest areas, thereby helping the policymakers in wildlife conservation.