An elephant can cross a tea garden without warning.
One moment, people may be working among the rows of bushes. The next, a herd could be moving towards a field, forest edge or settlement. In North Bengal, where elephant movement often overlaps with farms, tea gardens and villages, knowing that an animal is nearby can make a difference to what happens next.
Today, that warning could arrive on a phone.
The HEC Alert app, developed by the NWA Nature & Wildlife Foundation, is designed to give people living in elephant habitats an early warning when an elephant is reported nearby.
HEC stands for Human-Elephant Conflict. A registered user can report an elephant sighting, after which nearby users receive a notification. The app uses GPS to locate observations and can show recent elephant sightings around a user’s position.
The idea is simple: give people time to respond before an encounter turns into a conflict.
The Better India looked at NWA’s documents, its HEC Alert platform and the app’s current listing to understand how the system has evolved and how the technology fits into the larger community response in North Bengal.
When an elephant becomes a warning
Where is the elephant?
Is it in a tea garden? Has it entered a crop field? Is it moving towards a settlement? Which direction is it taking? And who needs to know?
The HEC Alert system is built around this chain of information.
NWA first announced the public release of HEC Alert on 18 March 2020, following what it described as extensive development and testing. India and Thailand were among the first countries where the application was made available.
At the time, NWA said registered users could report elephant sightings in real time and receive alerts for sightings within a 25-km radius. The organisation also proposed eventually making HEC data available to registered NGOs, scientists and government agencies.
More than six years later, the system is more than a notification service.
Where mobile networks are unavailable, the teams also use below-five-watt walkie-talkies to pass information. Photograph: (HEC Alert-Screenshot)
The HEC Alert app and NWA’s online public ‘elephant database’ now work from the same database.
The organisation invites communities, volunteers, citizen scientists and other stakeholders to contribute observations. These can then be viewed through the platform, where elephant activity is represented using maps and heatmap layers.
This creates a record of sightings that might otherwise remain a word-of-mouth warning.
Someone sees an elephant. The sighting is recorded. People nearby can be notified. The observation also becomes part of a wider pool of information about where elephants are being reported.
The technology is not meant to replace the person standing at the edge of a field.
It is meant to connect that person with others who need to know.
The people behind the alert
Anujit Basu, Secretary of the Nature and Wildlife Association (NWA), told The Better Indiathat the application functions as an early-warning network within a 25-km radius.
“The HEC Alert application works as a buzzing early-warning system within a 25-kilometre radius. When an elephant is reported, the alert reaches people in the surrounding area, allowing them to know that an elephant or herd is moving nearby. The application has both satellite and map modes, so users can understand the location and movement of elephants and respond accordingly.”
But Basu stresses that the application is only one part of the system.
“The real strength of the model is the community,” he says.
NWA has general volunteers as well as people who form part of response teams. According to Basu, a QR-code-based system is used to add volunteers to specific teams. At present, three such teams are operating in three locations, with groups of around 10 people each.
Most of them are farmers or people living along the forest fringe.
That matters because the people receiving the alerts are not necessarily unfamiliar with elephant behaviour. They know the fields, forest edges and paths around their homes. They know where crops are grown and where elephants have appeared before.
“When somebody sees an elephant, the information can be reported, and the relevant team can mobilise,” Basu says.
Where mobile networks are unavailable, the teams also use below-five-watt walkie-talkies to pass information.
The result is a communication system with more than one route: an app when there is connectivity, radio communication when there is not, and people on the ground who understand what an elephant’s movement could mean for their community.
Why Kurseong matters
This becomes particularly relevant in the Kurseong landscape.
North Bengal’s elephant habitats are not neatly separated from human activity. Research on the region has identified elephant-use areas across the Terai and Dooars, including forest divisions, tea-garden landscapes and agricultural areas.
An earlier assessment of elephant ecology in North Bengal also recorded extensive crop-raiding and identified Kurseong among the divisions affected by human-elephant conflict. The report documented crop raids, human deaths and house damage across the wider landscape between 2013 and 2018.
In such places, a warning system operates in the narrow window between an animal’s movement and a person’s response.
From an alert to a response
This is where the human component becomes as important as the application.
NWA’s HEC programme uses local teams and response mechanisms alongside digital reporting. Its public HEC platform describes the app as a tool through which observations can be reported and nearby users warned. HEC teams and managers can then use the collected information to observe and analyse individual conflict areas.
The app’s current Google Play listing describes the same basic principle: reporting an elephant observation automatically sends notifications to nearby users, while recent observations can be viewed around the user’s location. Photograph: (PTI)
The app’s current Google Play listing describes the same basic principle: reporting an elephant observation automatically sends notifications to nearby users, while recent observations can be viewed around the user’s location.
GPS-enabled positioning is required.
The current version has also moved beyond the original reporting-and-alert model. Its September 2026 listing records more than 10,000 downloads and includes team-management features, the ability for users to join teams, full-screen elephant photographs and one-to-one chats between team members.
For a system operating in a conflict landscape, these features can help connect a sighting with the people who may need to act on that information.
The radio when the phone goes quiet
There is an obvious limitation to any early-warning system that depends on a mobile phone: the network may not always be available.
That is why NWA’s community response also relies on walkie-talkies, according to Basu.
The radio does not provide a map or digital database. What it provides is something more basic — a way for one person to tell another that an elephant has been spotted.
Basu says the volunteers are unpaid. They are farmers and other residents who live along the forest fringe and understand the risks associated with elephant movement.
Their participation also changes the nature of the response.
The community is not simply being warned about wildlife from outside. Its members become part of the warning network themselves.
What the numbers can and cannot tell us
Basu says that around 2020–21, some areas were seeing crop deprivation of 50–60 per cent. He says that in areas where the model has since been implemented, the figure has fallen to around 4–5 per cent.
These figures are NWA’s own assessment and should be understood in that context. They do not establish that the app alone caused the decline.
Research on West Bengal has found that technology-based approaches can make warning and response more prompt, but has also concluded that no single mitigation technique is sufficient across the state. Effective approaches need to account for the landscape, human activity, elephant behaviour and local conditions.
The HEC Alert model itself reflects that reality: technology works alongside people who know the landscape and understand the challenges of living alongside elephants.
A database built from sightings
There is another function within the warning system.
NWA’s public HEC database allows observations to be collected through the website and app and made available as part of a common database. The organisation says communities, citizen scientists, volunteers and other stakeholders can contribute data, while HEC teams and managers can use the information to observe and analyse conflict areas.
Over time, repeated observations can help identify patterns in where and when elephants are being reported.
That is different from receiving a single WhatsApp message saying, “Elephant near the village.”
The message disappears. A recorded observation can become part of a larger picture — one that may help communities understand elephant movement and prepare for the next encounter.
