Madarihat, West Bengal: “If a human touches a wild animal, the herd rejects it. Even its mother walks away,” says Nirmal Kujur, the official in charge of elephant care at the Jaldapara sanctuary in north Bengal. “That's how some wild animals behave.”

Kujur's concern stems from the recent rescue of a 15-day-old elephant calf. It was rescued from the Mechi River after being separated from its herd during devastating floods that have ravaged the region, crippling critical wildlife habitats and forcing a dangerous exodus of animals into human settlements.

Although forest workers have treated the calf and are now feeding it bottled milk, its future remains highly uncertain due to the risk of rejection by its herd.

The rescue of the infant elephant highlights the larger crisis unfolding across north Bengal. It is a disaster that is both natural and human-made. While the floods have drowned forests, displaced wildlife and killed endangered species, they have also exposed a deeper ecological breakdown years in the making.

Behind this tragedy lie decades of unregulated mining, illegal construction, deforestation and poorly planned infrastructure projects that have stripped the region's hills, rivers and forests of their natural resilience.

Preliminary surveys by the forest department confirm significant wildlife casualties, including two critically vulnerable one-horned rhinoceros, two leopards, 17 gaur (bison) and 11 deer.

More than a week after the disaster struck, the full extent of the damage to the region's forests and wildlife remains unknown, as the government has yet to complete a comprehensive assessment.

“Emphasis is being given to sending the wild animals that have strayed into human settlements back to the forests. The bodies of many animals are still being recovered. The total extent of the damage will be understood once the rescue work is complete,” stated Birbaha Hansda, the forest minister of the state.

The floods have severely damaged north Bengal's protected area complex including the Jaldapara and Gorumara National Parks, the Buxa Tiger Reserve, the Mahananda sanctuary and Chapramari. These globally recognised reserves harbour endangered megafauna like the one-horned rhinoceros, Asiatic elephant and Bengal tiger.

Early assessments show 85 hectares of forest lost in Gorumara and 150 hectares of grassland destroyed across Jaldapara and Gorumara. In Gorumara alone, 35 hectares of key grazing land are now buried under silt, while 12 hectares of forest in the Moraghat range have been washed away.

Experts warn that unlike Buxa or Mahananda, these parks lack natural highlands for animals to retreat to during floods, intensifying the crisis.

Rhinos have been sighted near human settlements in Cooch Behar's Pundibari. In recent days, wild animal attacks have resulted in one death and left 11 people injured and hospitalised.

Ganga Thapa Tundu, a flood-affected resident, described the situation thus: “Where we've taken shelter, wild animals come after sunset. The government has installed lights and sends chasing parties with firecrackers, but we can't sleep at night. Leopards roam here. We are surviving under tarpaulin sheets without doors or protection.”

Herds of elephants now roam areas like Binnaguri, Shal Bari and Matiyali, drawn by the scent of ripening paddy. The forest department has reported thick silt deposits across forest floors and warned that many animals remain buried beneath.

“This time, the disaster has completely changed the habitat, food and familiar environment of the wild animals. There is also a psychological aspect to this. They too have lost countless familiar companions,” said Animesh Basu, a wildlife activist and co-ordinator of the Himalayan Nature and Adventure Foundation.

“Now, the behaviour of this large number of wild animals is becoming aggressive at times. The rehabilitation of the wild animals needs to be done very carefully,” he added.

Beyond the immediate damage from the floods, north Bengal's ecosystems are collapsing under years of encroachment and exploitation. Illegal construction, quarrying and deforestation have steadily weakened the region's natural defences against disasters like this one.

A chronic, decades-long driver of the region's vulnerability is the rampant, unregulated quarrying of sand and stone along riverbanks. Local reports suggest that over 500 quarries often operate without licenses, and this massive extraction destabilises the riverbanks, making them highly prone to collapse and directly contributing to riverbank breakage during flood events.

At the Buxa Tiger Reserve, the National Green Tribunal has adjudicated multiple cases of rampant illegal construction, including tourist lodges, hotels and homestays built within core conservation zones. Sixty-nine private accommodations were identified while some were operated by government departments, including a lodge run by the West Bengal Tourism Development Corporation at Jayanti.

Environmental experts warn that deforestation on slopes and the physical constriction of rivers by illegal construction and mining have made many riverbeds rise higher than adjacent inhabited areas, making floods more frequent and devastating.

“It is urgently necessary to be sincere towards the wildlife, which is a resource of North Bengal, to stop cutting trees and to stop various threats like extracting stone and sand from the riverbanks along the forest paths,” pointed out wildlife researcher Shyamaprasad Pandey.

Satellite data from Global Forest Watch shows massive tree cover loss between 2001 and 2024 in north Bengal. Alipurduar lost 8.69 kilohectares (kha), Jalpaiguri 2.77 kha and Darjeeling 2.13 kha. Some 67% of West Bengal's total tree cover loss occurred in areas where the dominant drivers of loss have caused deforestation as opposed to temporary disturbances.

Much of this deforestation is driven by large infrastructure projects justified under tourism expansion. The widening of National Highway 717 through the Gorumara forest corridor threatens hundreds of trees. Environmental groups recall a 2017 case near Lataguri where over 500 trees were felled despite permission for only 320.

The Sikkim rail project, cutting through fragile Himalayan slopes, has further destabilised the region's topography, triggering frequent landslides, soil erosion and sediment flow into river systems that amplify downstream flooding in the Dooars.

At an administrative meeting in Darjeeling, chief minister Mamata Banerjee instructed that instead of building concrete embankments, mangrove trees like those in the Sundarbans should be planted to strengthen natural barriers. She noted that 1,200 embankments in north Bengal have collapsed this time, blaming Sikkim, Bhutan and the Union government for neglect.

Translated from the Bengali original by Aparna Bhattacharya.

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