When the paddy fields begin to ripen in Assam’s Sonitpur district, two elephant herds start making a familiar journey.

For much of the year, Tara and Phul, the female elephants leading these herds, remain in and around Sonai Rupai Wildlife Sanctuary. But as harvest season approaches, they move towards tea gardens, farmland and the islands of the Brahmaputra River.

They often travel at night, passing close to homes, fields and roads.

For a farmer, an elephant entering a field can mean losing a crop. For the animal, crossing a railway line or encountering frightened people can be dangerous, sometimes fatal.

So how can we keep both safe when they need to share the same land?

To find answers, the Assam Forest Department and WWF-India decided to follow the elephants themselves.

Five elephants, 38000 locations. What did researchers find?

Between April 2021 and June 2026, researchers fitted GPS collars to five elephants in Udalguri, Sonitpur and Biswanath, three Assam districts where encounters between people and elephants are a serious concern.

Four were females travelling with their herds. The fifth was Bishu, a solitary, tuskless male in Biswanath.

The collars recorded their locations over time, giving researchers more than 38,000 GPS locations across five years.

Each location offered a small clue. Together, they showed which forests the elephants returned to, when they wandered towards farms and how they travelled between places that appeared disconnected on an ordinary map.

The findings, published in October 2026 in a report titled Tracking the Giants, gave researchers a clearer picture of journeys that villagers often become aware of only when elephants appear near their homes.

And one pattern stood out: the elephants travelled much farther during certain months of the year.

Why do elephants wander into farms every October?

In Sonitpur, Tara and Phul’s herds spent most of January to September within Sonai........

© The Better India