Thermal Drones for Elephant Monitoring

Human–elephant conflict is a life-and-death problem across eastern India. From 2020 through 2024, elephant attacks killed 2,727 people in India; 910 of those deaths occurred in West Bengal and Jharkhand alone. WNE India has worked on human–elephant conflict since 2018 and now monitors multiple elephant corridors across West Bengal, Jharkhand and Odisha through field teams, village networks, and ecological studies. Together, we are working on a critical missing capability: knowing where a moving herd is at night, where it is heading, and whether a village lies in its path.

Habitat Robotics is developing a thermal-drone workflow with WNE for repeated day and night operations. WNE’s field teams and community network guide the search areas, while thermal and RGB imagery helps locate and follow herds, estimate their direction and proximity to villages, and plan reacquisition after battery changes. Daytime aerial mapping will add context around corridors, forest edges, crossings, and settlements.

WNE retains the judgement and community relationships that determine when an alert should be issued; our role is to give that team better and more timely information. Together, the teams are laying the foundation for exploring assisted thermal detection, movement analysis, and repeatable drone field workflows that can give conservation teams more timely information..