COIMBATORE: There has been no elephant death on the railway tracks in Madukkarai forest range ever since AI-enabled camera surveillance system was commissioned in February 2024.
According to forest department sources, 12 AI-enabled cameras were fixed in the area in November 2023 on pilot basis and officially inaugurated by the then forest minister M Mathiventhan in February 2024. This has helped to monitor movement of wild animals, especially elephants, near the railway tracks.
Of the 12 AI cameras, five are fixed on railway line A and seven cameras are fixed on railway line B in Solakkarai reserve forest in the Madukkarai- Walayar section.
During daytime, five track watchers will be monitoring the tracks, and the numbers would be increased up to 10 during the night when the animal movement is high,” said an official of the Coimbatore forest division.
The official added in the long run, the AI cameras may be used to identify and profile individual animals. “We get immediate alerts about animal movement through the AI cameras which help us save their lives. We have complete data of animals that had approached the track and/or crossed the track, including the time.
We will analyse the high movement data from December to February when the elephant migration is at its peak. Apart from Madukkarai, we are setting up AI cameras in other forest ranges wherever the human-elephant conflict is high,” said a senior official.
Apart from AI cameras, 15 staff (track watchers) are engaged on shift basis to chase away animals that approach the tracks. Tribal people are also employed in the control room at Pudupathi for the purpose. According to sources, in 2024, a total of 3,000 incidents were reported in which the staff prevented elephants from getting on to the tracks.
The forest department has also acknowledged the role of railways in preventing elephant deaths as trains are operated at 45 km/h in night via Madukkarai.
The last incident occurred on November 26, 2021 in which three female elephants died after they were hit by an express train near Navakkarai in the forest range.