DEHRADUN: The latest elephant population estimation , conducted by the Wildlife Institute of India (WII) and various state forest departments, shows - quite alarmingly - that India's elephant population now stands at 15,887, a dip of almost 20% from 19,825 in 2017. This count, excluding pachyderm numbers in India's northeastern states, was based on DNA analysis and was completed between 2022 and 2023. Experts involved in the exercise attributed the change to the "use of different counting methods".
While in 2017, a block count method - which involved a headcount of elephants - was used, the 2022-23 operation relied on DNA extracted from elephant dung. A "mark-recapture" process was used for analysis, allowing researchers to track elephants based on DNA markers in their feces..
