India hosts nearly 60% of the world's wild Asian elephant population, with the Synchronous All India Population Estimation of Elephants (SAIEE) 2021–25 estimating the population at 22,446 elephants. These elephants are protected across 33 Elephant Reserves spanning 80,777 km² across 14 elephant-range states, representing an expansion of 8,610 km² since 2014. The conservation framework includes 150 identified elephant corridors, with the East-Central region having 52 corridors, North-East 48, Southern 32, and Northern 18 regions, including 19 inter-state corridors and 6 transboundary corridors connecting India and Nepal.
Project Elephant, implemented by the Ministry of Environment, Forest and Climate Change (MoEFCC), provides financial and technical support for habitat protection, captive elephant conservation, and human-elephant conflict mitigation. The program employs scientific monitoring including India's first DNA-based synchronized elephant census using dung sample analysis for genetic fingerprinting. Railway safety measures have reduced train-hit elephant deaths from 26 in 2013 to 12 in 2024 (over 50% reduction) through mitigation measures on 77 sensitive railway stretches covering 1,965.2 km with 705 structures including underpasses, overpasses, and AI-enabled Distributed Acoustic Sensing systems.
The government provides ex-gratia assistance including ₹10 lakh for death or permanent incapacitation, ₹2 lakh for grievous injury, treatment costs up to ₹25,000 for minor injuries, and compensation for crop and property losses. Captive elephant management is regulated through the Captive Elephant (Transfer or Transport) Rules, 2024 and the Gajah Suchana mobile application that maintains a national genetic database with DNA profiles and ownership details. The Management Effectiveness Evaluation framework for Elephant Reserves was launched in 2023 and tested in four reserves, with Regional Action Plans developed for coordinated cross-state conservation efforts.