EleFootprints Auction 2025

Odisha’s forests, once lush sanctuaries for elephants, are now vanishing under the relentless pressures of development, leaving these gentle giants with nowhere to turn. Starving and desperate, elephants are forced to risk their lives crossing treacherous highways, seeking food and water in villages and croplands, only to be electrocuted. This tragic plight is intensifying human-elephant conflicts, with lives lost on both sides.

Media reports suggest that 89 elephants were killed in the year 2024, with one third of those deaths caused by electrocution. The 2024 Winter Elephant Census, as reported by EBharat and The Hindu, paints a heart-wrenching picture: Odisha is home to 2,103 elephants across 38 divisions, but in just six months, only five births were recorded—an unbearable contrast to the 48 deaths in the same timeframe. Over the past decade, 790 elephants have perished in Odisha, with electrocution leading as the primary cause of these unnatural deaths. In…