For a farmer, a field of paddy or sugarcane is months of work standing in one place. If elephants enter and damage the crop, a season’s income can disappear with it.

For an elephant moving through the Terai, the same field looks very different. Paddy, maize and sugarcane are all food, and they offer plenty of energy in a relatively small area.

This overlap between what a farmer depends on and what an elephant wants to eat lies at the centre of a difficult question: how do you protect livelihoods in a landscape elephants continue to use?

Fences are one answer. In parts of Uttar Pradesh’s Terai Elephant Reserve, farmers and conservationists are also trying something else.

They are looking at what grows inside the field.

The crop drawing attention is turmeric, which elephants are less attracted to than paddy, maize or sugarcane. Farmers are being encouraged to grow it alongside, or in place of some of, the crops that are more vulnerable to elephant damage.

The idea makes sense only if it works for the farmer too. Turmeric has to grow well, cost less to cultivate and find a market that pays enough to make the shift worthwhile.

That is where this experiment begins.

Why are elephants choosing farms over forests?

The Terai Elephant Reserve was notified in December 2022 and covers more than 3,000 sq km across the Dudhwa-Pilibhit landscape. It includes forest areas associated with Dudhwa, Pilibhit, Katarniaghat and Kishanpur. Government sources put Uttar Pradesh’s elephant population at about 232.

The reserve also borders Nepal, and elephants move across the international boundary. Their route, however, does not run through one continuous stretch of forest. Farms form part of this landscape too.

For an elephant, many of the crops growing there are familiar kinds of food.

“Sugarcane is a species of grass. Paddy, wheat and maize are grasses too. So, from an elephant’s perspective, they are all food,” explains Dr Aritra Kshettry, National Lead-Elephant Conservation at WWF-India.

Cultivated crops have another advantage. They pack a considerable amount of energy into one place.

“Nutritionally, these crops have been selectively bred by humans for thousands of years to maximise carbohydrates, which means they are a rich source of energy,” says Kshettry.

In a forest, getting the same amount of energy takes much longer.

“To get the same amount of energy, elephants would have to forage for up to 12 to 14 hours a day in the forest, feeding on bits of grass and trees,” he explains. “They can get the same energy in a couple of hours by feeding on paddy, sugarcane or maize.”

Seen from the elephant’s side, a cultivated field can therefore be difficult to pass up.

“From an energy point of view, it makes more sense for elephants to feed on crops,” says Kshettry. “But croplands also have costs.”

Those costs include people, roads, electricity infrastructure and other hazards. An easy source of food can also bring elephants into situations that are dangerous for both the animals and the people living around them.

The challenge has become more pressing as elephant movement in this part of the Terai has changed.

When seasonal visitors began staying year-round

According to Kshettry, elephants were once seasonal visitors to........

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