Karnataka, Assam, Tamil Nadu hold 60% of India’s 22,466 elephants

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.