India's first DNA elephant census finds 25% drop in population, warns of rising habitat loss

India’s first nationwide DNA-based elephant census revealed a nearly 25% drop in the country’s wild elephant population over eight years, highlighting growing threats from shrinking forests and intensifying human–elephant conflict.

Released on Tuesday, the report titled “Status of Elephants in India: DNA-based Synchronous All-India Population Estimation of Elephants (SAIEE 2021–25)” estimated 22,446 elephants across India, compared with 29,964 in 2017.

The exercise, led by the Wildlife Institute of India (WII), marks a move away from earlier visual or dung-based counts under Project Elephant—launched in 1992 to protect elephants and their migratory corridors—to a scientifically advanced DNA mark–recapture technique. The new approach, similar to the one used in tiger estimation, identifies individual elephants through unique genetic signatures, providing a far more accurate count.

WII scientist and lead author Qamar Qureshi said the study was the first comprehensive DNA-based elephant count in the world. “It is a mammoth scientific exercise, and it is praiseworthy that our nation took this step so that future conservation can align with science,” he said. However, he warned that “loss of forests, fragmentation of habitat and corridor connectivity” were fuelling conflict, especially in central India and Assam. “The silver lining is that poaching has declined — the real concern is habitat loss,” he added.

WII director G.S. Bhardwaj urged that the results be treated as a new scientific baseline rather than compared directly with older data. “Given the methodological changes, the 2021–25 estimates are not comparable to past figures and must serve as the foundation for future monitoring,” he said.

Karnataka continues to have the highest elephant population at 6,013, followed by Assam (4,159), Tamil Nadu (3,136), Kerala (2,785), Uttarakhand (1,792) and Odisha (912). Regionally, the Western Ghats remain the biggest stronghold with 11,934 elephants, though down from 14,587 in 2017. The northeastern hills and Brahmaputra floodplains now host 6,559 elephants (down from 10,139), while the central Indian highlands and eastern ghats together have 1,891, compared with 3,128 earlier.

The report noted that the Western Ghats, once home to a contiguous elephant population, are becoming increasingly fragmented by plantations, farmland fencing, invasive species, and infrastructure growth. In Assam, deforestation in Sonitpur and Golaghat has aggravated already severe human-elephant conflicts.

In central India—covering Jharkhand, Odisha, Madhya Pradesh, Chhattisgarh, Maharashtra, northern West Bengal, and Andhra Pradesh—habitats outside protected areas have suffered from mining, shifting cultivation, and highways or railways cutting across corridors. The region, home to less than 10% of India’s elephants, accounted for nearly 45% of human deaths caused by elephants. In the Shivalik and Gangetic plains (Uttarakhand, Uttar Pradesh, Bihar), numbers were 2,062, almost unchanged from 2,085 in 2017.

The DNA-based mark–recapture study involved collecting elephant dung samples along 188,030 trails, covering 6.6 lakh km, and genotyping them at 11 microsatellite loci. Researchers mapped each sample to a unique genetic identity and used spatially explicit capture–recapture models to estimate detectability and total population size.

In all, scientists examined 3.2 lakh dung plots, collected 21,056 samples, and generated DNA profiles for 4,065 individual elephants. Since elephants lack distinctive physical markings, DNA provided a breakthrough in accurately identifying individuals and estimating densities.

A WII scientist present at the report’s release said the findings should serve as a “wake-up call” for stronger protection of elephant landscapes in Odisha, Jharkhand, and Chhattisgarh.

With inputs from ToI