Guwahati, Oct. 6 -- Assam's elephants are moving through a far more complicated landscape than forests alone. A five-year GPS telemetry study has mapped their journeys through tea gardens, crop fields, river channels and settlements-and recorded seasonal movement across the Indo-Bhutan border.

The study by the Assam Forest Department and WWF-India tracked four female-led herds and one solitary male elephant in Udalguri, Sonitpur and Biswanath between 2021 and 2026. More than 38,000 GPS locations were collected, offering a detailed picture of how elephants use Assam's increasingly fragmented landscape.

The findings are contained in Tracking the Giants: Movement and Habitat-Use Patterns of GPS-Collared Elephants in Assam, released in Guwa...