Sustaining the Human-Elephant Relationship
Community | Coexistence | Culture | Science
“Nature can’t be limited to pockets of forests cut off from people. And humans can’t live without nature.”
We were inspired by the unique Shola forests of the Nilgiri Biosphere Reserve — a place where humans and nature have shared space for centuries and continue to do so in ways that can inspire the world.
Our Work
Nilgiris
Quantifying Lantana density across the landscape
Created a mechanised way to uproot lantana
Using drones, bioacoustics, and traditional knowledge to monitor forest
Wayanad
We are running a controlled experiment across four quarter-hectare plots using a different method such as cutting high and covering with mud, cutting at ground level and covering with mud, cutting at ground level and covering with a sack, and full uprooting.
Mysore
WildCarbon’s pyrolysis plant converts Lantana biomass harvested by indigenous communities into 5 to 10 tonnes of high-quality biochar every day.
Working with Parry Agro (Murugappa Group) and potentially Tata Coffee on large-scale field trials, testing whether biochar can meaningfully improve soil fertility and reduce synthetic fertiliser use in plantation crops.
Tamil Nadu, Kerala, West Bengal, Assam, eastern Nepal and Bhutan
We’ve built an app that lets field staff photograph and upload elephant sightings, building a behavioural profile and history for A small number of elephants cause the vast majority of conflict
Gudalur, Wayanard
We are mapping land use outside protected areas to understand what pulls elephants into croplands.
We are comparing four types, watching how different individual elephants interact with each other.
Nursery in Begur
Building a native grass nursery, with seeds collected through a local community network, to restore the native grassy understory that Lantana has displaced
Partners
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Holistic Approach to Coexistence
We believe conservation has to be human-inclusive to work. Not people versus nature, where you remove either humans or nature, but people as part of nature. Only when bus-stand, tea-shop and drawing-room conversations revolve around wildlife, forests and the sustainability of human lifestyles will our natural world have a chance of surviving.
At The Shola Trust, we focus on research and proof of concept — and then look at how these ideas can be integrated into businesses and government policies so they continue in perpetuity. Conservation can’t work in small, time-bound, funded projects. It has to become part of everybody’s everyday life.
