Elephants facing anthropogenic hazards in Assam
Elephants in Assam, India, are increasingly suffering from human-induced hazards, including wire snares and deep trenches dug around tea estates. Conservationists and forest officials are actively working to rescue and rehabilitate these animals, including a calf recently admitted to the Centre for Wildlife Rehabilitation and Conservation.
Why it matters
This highlights the ongoing conflict between human economic activity and wildlife conservation in biodiversity hotspots.
Elephants are increasingly facing anthropogenic or human-induced hazards in Assam.
Days after wildlife veterinarians treated a female elephant’s trunk trapped in a wire-mesh snare on the fringes of western Assam’s Raimona National Park, a sub-adult elephant was freed from a truck tyre stuck around its neck.
The elephant, struggling to shake off the tyre, was spotted in a herd at Bukhial Tea Estate in eastern Assam’s Golaghat district on Thursday (September 10, 2026) morning.
Officials from the Golaghat Forest Division and a team from the Centre for Wildlife Rehabilitation and Conservation (CWRC) near Kaziranga rushed to the location to assess the situation and monitor the herd’s movement.
“The rescue team carefully removed the tyre from around the distressed elephant’s neck after it was chemically immobilised. The elephant later returned to its herd,” Bhaskar Choudhury, CWRC’s centre head and lead veterinarian at the Wildlife Trust of India (WTI), said.
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