The villagers in the vicinity of Udanti Sitanadi tiger reserve have been granted the opportunity to keep the danger of wild elephant attacks at bay for the past seven months with the help of the Artificial Intelligence-based Chhattisgarh Elephant Tracking and Alert app. The arrival of the app has resulted in zero causality since its launch.  

Once launched as a pilot project, the elephant tracking app has been adopted by many other forest divisions in the state. The AI-integrated app works with an elephant tracker system and human patrolling teams that feed information about the presence and movement of herds of elephants in the app.  

The AI detects the villages within a radius of ten kilometres of proximity with the heard and sends alerts to the villagers’ mobile phones as calls, voice messages and WhatsApp messages. The people who receive these alerts are the ones who have their mobile numbers with their names and GPS locations.  

According to Time of India, the app’s founder and deputy director of Udant Sitanadi tiger reserve, Varun Jain, said that the situation demanded tracking the movement and presence of the herds of elephants in the expected regions and alarm the locals about the danger.  

As per reports, almost 2,500 locals have registered with the app from 110 villages in various states.  

Jain further said, “The incidents of human-elephant conflict and attacks, common in the region with 110 villages, have significantly dropped in the past 7-8 months in the tiger reserve. Earlier, the incidents were frequent and casuality was high”.  

The reserve, which extends from the Gariaband district to its nearby Dhamtari district, has reported continuous human-elephant conflicts. At the same time, the northern parts of the state also recorded elephant attacks, which left more than 230 people killed in the last three years, while over 75 elephants died in the past five years.  

Jain also mentioned that the app could help maintain data and study the roaming pattern of elephant herds, such as which corridor they are marching on, which forest area they prefer and the villages in the vicinity and when they choose to move from district to district.  

The tracking system is predominantly human-driven, with patrolling teams venturing into the forest by foot and jeeps to gather direct and indirect evidence of the movement of elephants. The app also helps send alerts on the presence of other wild animals like leopards, wild buffaloes and bears.