# Karnataka, Assam, Tamil Nadu hold 60% of India’s 22,466 elephants 2026-08-16T11:20:37+00:00 | Governance | Indian Opinion Desk Corroboration: 1 independent outlet Karnataka, Assam, and Tamil Nadu together hold 59.29% of India's estimated 22,466 elephants, according to a Wildlife Institute of India (WII) report released on Tuesday. Karnataka leads with 6,013 elephants, followed by Assam at 4,159 and Tamil Nadu at 3,136. The report, titled Status of Elephants in India: DNA-based Synchronous All-India Population Estimation of Elephants, used a DNA-based mark recapture method for the first time. WII officials said the new methodology makes the figures incomparable with past counts and should be treated as a new baseline for monitoring. Seven north-eastern States and part of West Bengal support 22.22% of the country's elephants. The Western Ghats landscape, covering Karnataka, Tamil Nadu, and Kerala, accounts for 53.17%. The study involved foot surveys across 6,66,977 km and collection of 21,056 dung samples. ## Coverage - thehindu.com This story was synthesised by AI from the source linked above. Tags: Assam, Karnataka, Tamil Nadu, Western Ghats, Wildlife Institute of India Canonical: https://indianopinion.org/karnataka-assam-tamil-nadu-hold-60-of-indias-22466-elephants/ License: Summary and commentary (c) Indian Opinion, reusable with attribution. Facts belong to the linked sources. Cite: https://indianopinion.org/karnataka-assam-tamil-nadu-hold-60-of-indias-22466-elephants/#story-in-brief Review state: restored archive article, accurate at time of publication, not offered to search indexes. How this brief was made: an AI model read the report linked above and wrote this summary and analysis, which were published automatically. Published briefs are sampled every hour by an automated quality check; the editor verifies its findings and approves corrections, and corrected briefs carry a dated correction line. We do no original reporting. Methodology: https://indianopinion.org/ai-use-policy/