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Why is there an elephant on the zebra-crossing? Did Bengaluru city move into its way or did the elephant come to Bengaluru? This project will help to understand elephant behavior, movement patterns and family composition in periurban areas by analyzing data collected over the last 15 years. Based on the findings Nishant from FERAL and Srinivas from FEP will make a prediction model that helps urban planners and policy makers to avoid human-elephant conflict in the future.

The first part of the project, for which environmental and biological factors influencing foraging and ranging patterns of Asian elephants, especially the males, in peri-urban areas of Bengaluru were assessed has been completed. The results from this exercise have provided the baseline values that reflect decision-making in the individual elephants. This is now being used to model elephant distribution and fine-scale movement in the current land-use and land-cover scenario. The process of visualising information on the changing movement patterns and distribution of elephants, collected through questionnaire surveys by interviewing field-level Forest Department staff, covering an area of nearly 10,000 sqkm is being completed.