Executive Summary : | The Human-Elephant-Conflict: Over the years, contentious reduction of forest cover and shortage of resources have intensified Human-Elephant-Conflict (HEC) in tropical and sub-tropical countries of Africa and Asia. The ‘Elephant Crop Raid’ has severely disturbed the socio-economic balance of the rural area adjacent to resave forest. Not only financial loss, death on both sides, due to intense conflict is extremely frequent nowadays. As per the MoEF report, in India, every year on average 400 people and 100 elephants are getting killed as a result of HEC and the government is compensating on average 15 to 20 corers due to elephant crop-raiding. Our initiatives towards HEC mitigation: As one of the leading research groups in India, over the years, through several national and international projects, we have developed indigenous elephant early warning, elephant road & railway track crossing alert systems, crop safety systems for farmers and personal safety systems forest guards & conservationists. With our native, low-cost devices and technology, we have registered a notable impact on HEC management across India, in collaboration with the forest department, NGOs, and individuals. Even though our designs are proving to be successful in HEC management, we want to go a step further and design a groundbreaking device that will provide us with the ability to communicate with elephants in their language. A potential tool to communicate with elephants: It’s a well-established fact that elephant uses infrasound for long-range information exchange (up to several kilometers). The information transferred through a specific low infrasound pattern is either a friendly call or a warning about potential danger. This particular fact holds the key to a benchmark system for human-elephant conflict management; Infrasonic Warning Call Generator System (IWCGS). The IWCGS setup will record the elephant’s ‘potential danger/warning’ infrasound call, decode the signal pattern, and will regenerate it artificially, with high dB infrasound. Such an artificial infrasonic warning call for the elephant will keep the elephant away from human habitation and thus will minimize conflict. Our recent successful infrasound-based crocodile deterrent system at Madras Crocodile Bank Trust, Chennai has provided us the positive input to go for one of the ultimate HEC management devices; IWCGS. Overall goal: The proposed project has planned to design the first ever elephant infrasonic warning call generator prototype which will warn elephants about the potential danger of venturing into the human settlement in their language and thus keep them away. The IWCGS prototype will be designed and field verified and will be delivered to the funding agency at the pre-commercialization stage. |
Co-PI: | Dr. B Ramakrishnan, Jss College Of Pharmacy, Ooty, Tamil Nadu-643001, Dr. Arulmurugan L, Bannari Amman Institute Of Technology, Alathukombai, Tamil Nadu-638401 |