This National Wildlife Week, we look at the many ways human choices shape our relationship with wildlife — from what we grow and believe to what we consume and how we understand animals. Through four stories, the series explores everyday conflicts and connections, and the people finding more thoughtful ways to share space with wildlife.
Think back to the first time you went somewhere new as a child. You probably didn’t read a map. You held someone’s hand, watched where they stepped, and slowly the road became yours.
Elephant calves learn the world in much the same way. Only their classroom is a forest that stretches across two countries, and their teacher is often the oldest female in the family, one who first walked this path decades ago.
Before dawn breaks over the forests, an elephant herd begins to move.
At the front walks the oldest female. She does not stop to search for the way ahead. She does not hesitate at the fork where two forest trails split.
She turns with the confidence of someone who has been here many times before. She has, perhaps dozens of times over her life. There is no signboard here, no GPS, no one to ask for directions. There is only memory: hers, and before that, her mother’s.
Behind her, the rest of the herd follows in single file. Mothers keep calves close to their sides.
Incredible sight ! A big shout-out to Loco Pilot Das and Assistant Loco Pilot Umesh Kumar of the 15959 Kamrup Express for their swift and heroic action on 16th October in saving a herd of about 60 elephants crossing the railway tracks between Habaipur and Lamsakhang by applying… pic.twitter.com/otfQ3nwjDJ
— Supriya Sahu IAS (@supriyasahuias) October 18, 2024
None of the calves has ever made this journey. Yet, by the time the day ends, they will have crossed a river, entered another country and reached forests.
Across the Terai Arc Landscape, throughout the year, herds travel both ways between Uttar Pradesh’s Katarniaghat Wildlife Sanctuary and Nepal’s Bardia National Park, using the same forested corridors their families have followed for generations.
Elephants have culture. And every journey is how they pass it on.
Culture is a word we usually keep for ourselves. We use it for our languages, our festivals, the recipes our grandmothers never wrote down. So what could it possibly mean for an elephant?
The answer begins at a river.
Lessons on the move
By the time the herd reaches the Geruwa River, the current is strong after the rains, but the matriarch enters first. The younger females follow, while the smallest calves pause at the water’s edge before placing their feet exactly where their mothers did moments earlier.
Adults instinctively close ranks, forming a loose circle around the youngest members as the family makes its way across. From a distance, it looks like an ordinary river crossing.
Look closer, conservationists say, and it becomes something else entirely.
According to Apoorv Dixit, Indian Forest Service officer and Divisional Forest Officer of the Katarniaghat Wildlife Division, elephants continue returning because the Terai still offers connected habitat, abundant water and food resources.
“The Terai region has abundant water, extensive sugarcane cultivation and suitable habitat,” he says. “Earlier, elephants mostly used this landscape in transit. But over time, habitat fragmentation elsewhere may be influencing their behaviour.”
He believes changes across parts of the Nepal landscape may also be shaping how herds use the corridor today, making connected forests in the Indian Terai increasingly important.
Yet what stays with him most is the river crossing itself.
“It is one of the most beautiful sights you can witness,” Dixit tells The Better India. “Entire herds crossing together. The babies often stop to play in the water or try to swim while the adults wait. It shows how deeply social they are.”
That image captures moments which are difficult to express through numbers.
The calves are learning where the river is shallow enough to cross, how to move with the current, when to wait and when to follow.
Nobody hands them instructions. Think of a child who learns to cross a busy road by holding a parent’s hand, watching and copying, until one day they do it alone. The calves learn the same way, simply by being there.
A train of elephants crossing a railway line. Elephant herd size varies from small to big. I have seen a single herd of upto 95 elephants once. Keep counting in this family. pic.twitter.com/shAFYXUNmG
— Parveen Kaswan, IFS (@ParveenKaswan) October 30, 2024
In biology, culture refers to knowledge and behaviours learned socially and passed from one generation to another, rather than inherited through DNA. For elephants, this includes migration routes, feeding areas, communication, responses to danger and even the timing of seasonal movements. Their world is built not only on instinct but also on memory.
Now, even the law is beginning to catch up
On August 17, 2026, the Supreme Court stepped in to protect these ancient pathways, making it clear that elephants cannot be stopped simply because their journeys cross into farms or human settlements.
Hearing a matter concerning the protection of wildlife corridors, a three-judge bench led by Chief Justice of India Surya Kant observed, “We are very clear that there cannot be obstacles in the way of wildlife. Elephant herds have a practice of travelling long distances.”
The Court directed the Centre to conduct a fresh, nationwide survey of elephant corridors and identify obstructions, while making clear that crop damage cannot be used as a justification to block traditional routes.
The herd’s living library
At the centre of this system stands the matriarch.
Unlike species where leadership depends on physical strength, elephant societies are led by experience. The oldest female carries decades of knowledge gathered through repeated journeys across forests, rivers and grasslands.
She remembers which waterholes survive the driest summers. She knows where bamboo regenerates after the rains and where mineral-rich salt licks lie hidden beneath the forest floor. She recognises safe river crossings and understands which routes have become difficult as landscapes change.
Her memory becomes the herd’s map. Sometimes that map decides who survives. Researchers who studied African elephants in Tanzania during a severe drought made a striking finding. Families led by older matriarchs, who remembered an earlier drought and knew where water might still be found, lost far fewer calves than families led by younger females.
Migration is therefore much more than movement between two places.
Why elephants return
Across India, from the Nilgiri Biosphere Reserve in the south to the forests of Assam, Odisha, northern West Bengal and the Terai, herds continue to follow ancient pathways now recognised as elephant corridors.
GPS tracking has shown that elephants repeatedly return to the same river crossings, forest clearings and seasonal feeding grounds with striking accuracy. They are not wandering in search of habitat.
They are retracing journeys learned from earlier generations.
The Katarniaghat elephant corridor offers one of the clearest examples of this continuity.
Stretching across India and Nepal, it connects Katarniaghat Wildlife Sanctuary with Bardia National Park, allowing elephants, tigers and rhinos to move freely across an ecological landscape that predates political borders.
Long before an international boundary separated the two countries, these forests were one connected ecosystem. The elephants still behave as though they are.
“The presence of natural barriers such as rivers is not a problem,” says Sitangshu Das, Assistant Projects Manager (Biodiversity) at Nature Environment & Wildlife Society (NEWS).
“Ill-conceived development that leads to forest loss and fragmentation affects elephant movement across landscapes and hinders connectivity.”
“When corridors disappear, elephants risk losing opportunities to pass on knowledge that has accumulated over generations”, he adds.
A calf prevented from walking a traditional route cannot learn it. If enough generations miss that journey, an entire migration tradition may fade.
Elephants rise by pushing others👌
An Elephant herd crossing a elephant proof(?) trench.
The way some of them push others while going up is just amazing family behaviour.
Nice one shared by colleague @verma_akash. pic.twitter.com/ID9tiRGVCX
— Susanta Nanda IFS (Retd) (@susantananda3) August 15, 2020
It’s a bit like a family recipe that nobody cooks anymore. Once the last person who remembers it is gone, no cookbook can bring it back.
This understanding is changing how conservation is approached in landscapes like Katarniaghat.
Since October 2023, the Gajamitra (Friend of the Elephant) programme has placed local communities at the centre of that effort.
Villagers trained under the initiative monitor elephant movements, alert nearby settlements, patrol forest edges and help guide herds safely without causing harm.
“Our objective is not only to reduce crop losses or property damage but to create an environment where people and elephants can coexist safely and sustainably,” says Ajanta Dey, Joint Secretary and Programme Director at NEWS.
“At NEWS, we believe that the future of conservation lies in combining science, community stewardship and strong institutional partnerships.”
For forest officials, the crossings remind them of how deeply these traditions are embedded.
So that calf splashing in the Geruwa River is doing more than playing. It is rehearsing a journey it will repeat throughout its life.
Years from now, one of those calves will become the matriarch. She will lead another generation across the same forests, pause at familiar bends in the river, and choose paths she first learned while walking beside her mother.
That is how their culture survives.
