Human Elephant Conflicts
Human wildlife conflict is on the rise worldwide due to many factors such as human population growth and increased consumption of natural resources for the purpose of development. Human elephant conflict is also on the rise mainly due to intensified agriculture production and narrow range of profitable agriculture crops due to increased cost of labour and production, changing land use pattern, increased urbanization, shift of land ownership primarily small scale farmer to large scale farmers, preference of education institutions, spiritual institutions, housing in the forest fringe areas, increase in wildlife population, habitat loss and fragmentation, wildlife behavioral change leading to higher human tolerance, change of forest friendly life style of forest dwelling communities, corridor disturbances, etc. In Coimbatore forest division due to the high stake holder tolerance and acceptability level by the wildlife and elephant friendly farmers the elephants while using the forests as migratory route tend to raid the attractive crops raised such as Maize, Fodder Cholam, Sugar cane, Banana, etc raised along the fringes. The elephants are known to raid more than ten types of crops raised in more than 50 hamlets along the forest fringe areas and the crop raiding is the highest during the fruiting of the cereals crops i.e December and January. Generally the peak raiding season starts from post North East Monsoon and lasts till March which incidentally coincides with the migratory season. It is also seen that two to three elephants team up and carry excursions deeper into the human settlements even up to 10 km away from the forest fringe areas. The Coimbatore Forest Division has under taken many conflict mitigation measures such as 1. Development of physical barriers such as trenches and Solar Power Fences 2. Setting up of anti depredation teams in vulnerable points with search lights, etc 3. Setting up of information network with the help of farmers so as to obtain information on the movement of wild elephants outside the forest areas 4. A crop compensation mechanism to compensate farmers (farmers get up to Rs 15,000 as compensation).
Wildlife Damage- Compensation paid to the affected peoples during 2006-2007 and 2007-2008.
| Year | Human Death (Rs) | Injury to Human (Rs) | Crop Damage (Rs) | Asset Damage (Rs) |
| 2006-2007 | 400000 | 74042 | 772150 | 0 |
| 2007-2008 | 375000 | 130000 | 1932000 | 22000 |