Elephants in the fields, and what a habitat holds

In several parts of India, especially Odisha, Jharkhand, West Bengal, Assam and Chhattisgarh, elephants often walk into farms and villages. Why?

Their forest home can run short. When plants become scarce and waterholes dry up, elephants wander into nearby farms or plantations looking for food such as bananas and sugarcane. They damage crops and sometimes harm people and farm animals. They aren't being naughty: they're hungry, and their home has shrunk.

Why are the plants scarce? Changes in rainfall and temperature affect them, and cutting trees for roads and buildings makes it worse. Forests dry and shrink, and a forest is these animals' natural home. Elephants are adapted to forest life, so sudden changes make it hard for them to survive. Put simply: fewer trees, less rain, less food, and the elephants move.

So wildlife ecologists have marked out corridors in many parts of the country. Like a school corridor, a corridor is a safe path: it connects forest habitats, so elephants can travel from one big forest to another without running into villages.

This one story shows how closely the parts of nature are linked. To understand such links, start with the parts of the environment.

A habitat is simply the place where an organism lives: its home (H for habitat, H for home). It could be a pond, a forest, a farm, or even just the bark of a tree. The plants and animals in it interact with each other and adapt to its conditions.

Look at two habitats (Activity 12.1). In groups with your teacher, pick two near you: a pond, a forest, a farm, or a large tree such as a banyan, mango or pilkhan (white fig). List the living beings and the non-living things you see in each, and record them in Table 12.1.

Both habitats have living and non-living things, though different kinds. The living beings are the biotic components (bio = life). The non-living things are the abiotic components (a-bio = no life): air, sunlight, water, temperature and soil.

Different organisms use the same habitat differently. A snake comes out at night; a rodent is active by day. They share one forest but face different conditions, and that is how they live together in harmony.