Chitwan, Oct. 25 -- Laxmi Adhikari faces a difficult choice. If she harvests her one-bigha (about 6,773 square metres) paddy field now, rain could damage the crop. If she waits, wild elephants emerging from nearby Chitwan National Park could eat and trample it before she can bring it in.

"My paddy field is in a terrible state. I don't even feel like going to look at it," she said in frustration.

Elephants have raided her fields in previous years, but the damage has been particularly severe this season. One 10-kattha plot (about 3,387 square metres) was expected to yield 35 to 40 muri of paddy (about 1.8 to 2.1 tonnes), but the elephants have eaten and trampled so much that little may be left to harvest, she said. Other plots have suffer...