India, March 4 -- A new study analysing two decades of organised crop-guarding efforts to deter elephants from entering farms has found a counterintuitive outcome: villages with active monitoring recorded two to three times more elephant deaths.

The elephant monitoring squads were set up in 2004 in Assam's Sonitpur district where human-elephant conflict had led to high fatalities on both sides. The aim behind setting up the squads was to keep elephants away from human habitation to reduce conflict and hence reduce deaths. The study set out to find whether this intervention was indeed effective in decreasing deaths, but found increased elephant mortality instead.

The study findings however, need to be viewed with caution. While they show...