Chennai: Wild elephants in the Coimbatore forest division have increasingly been straying into human settlements, leaving a trail of destruction across farmlands and claiming lives.

Over the past ten months, elephants have ventured out of reserve forests nearly 5,000 times, raiding standing crops on 690 occasions and killing ten people — a stark reminder of the deepening human-elephant conflict in the region. Spread over 320 square kilometres, the Coimbatore forest division is home to more than 300 elephants.

Forest officials admit that predicting their movement into human habitations is nearly impossible due to the vast and fragmented terrain. With crop losses mounting and villagers living in fear, the forest department is now betting big on early warning technologies to monitor elepha

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