The elephants used to come after dark.
Villagers along the Garo Hills knew the routine. As evening settled over the forested borderlands of northern Bangladesh, herds would descend from the hills, moving through familiar corridors in search of food. Farmers guarded their fields. Families stayed indoors. By morning, the animals would often have retreated into the forest.
That routine has changed.
"Previously, they would come in the evening or at night. Now they come at any time, even in the afternoon," Rahmat Ali, a resident of Chhoto Gajni in Jhenaigati, told Daily Waadaa.
Rahmat has watched elephants and humans confront each other for as long as he can remember. He has seen crops destroyed, villagers frightened and attempts to keep the animals away fail.
"I've been watching these confrontations between elephants and people since I was born," he said. "We don't want this fighting anymore."
Across Sherpur's Sreebardi, Jhenaigati and Nalitabari upazilas, the struggle between people and wild elephants has become an enduring feature of life along the Bangladesh-India border.
The numbers reveal its cost. Over the past 13 years, 34 people and 33 wild elephants have died in human-elephant conflicts in the region, according to the Wildlife Management and Nature Conservation Department.
Behind those deaths is a transformation of the landscape.
The Garo Hills once provided elephants with forested passages connecting feeding grounds and habitats. The animals moved across hills, streams and wooded terrain, following routes established over generations. Much of that landscape has since been altered.
Forests have been cleared for cultivation. Houses have appeared along traditional elephant corridors. Agricultural fields now occupy land through which herds once moved with relatively little interference.
The elephants have not abandoned their routes. But the routes increasingly lead through places where people live and work.
And when the animals arrive, the consequences can be devastating.
For farmers in the Garo Hills, an elephant herd can destroy months of work in a matter of hours.
The animals enter fields of paddy, maize and vegetables, feeding on crops and trampling what remains. Sometimes they approach houses, damaging property and forcing residents to seek safety.
Villagers attempt to drive them away, often using noise, firecrackers and other improvised methods. Such encounters can quickly become dangerous.
Ahmed Hossain, a resident of Balijuri in Sreebardi, told Waadaa that some confrontations are made worse by people who approach elephants simply to film them.
"Some youngsters follow the elephants around just to make videos," he said. "They go close to the animals, set off firecrackers, shout and throw stones."
The reaction, he said, is predictable. "The elephants become frightened and angry. That's when they start charging. Sometimes, though, they simply retreat into the forest."
Alal Uddin, another resident of Sreebardi, believes repeated provocation has made an already difficult situation more dangerous.
"Elephants don't harm people for no reason," he told Waadaa. "But when people repeatedly disturb them, they become aggressive."
His warning was straightforward. "If this continues, both people and elephants will die."
Not every confrontation begins with deliberate harassment. For families whose livelihoods depend on small plots of farmland, protecting a crop can mean protecting their principal source of income.
Some farmers have resorted to installing electrified wires around their fields, a practice that can kill elephants.
Jalil Mia, a resident of Chhoto Gajni, told Waadaa that such measures threaten the survival of the animals without addressing why they enter cultivated land.
"Some people put up electric wires to save their crops, and elephants end up dying," he said.
"If we want to protect the forest, we must also protect the elephants' movement corridors and make people more aware."
Hossain Ali, another resident, said for him the question now is less about conservation policy than about being able to live without fear. "We want elephants to remain in their own territory and people to remain in theirs," he told Waadaa.
"How the government will make that happen is something only the government knows. We don't want to suffer like this anymore."
But separating the two has become increasingly difficult.
The land that villagers consider essential for farming and housing is often part of the same landscape elephants have historically depended on for food and movement.
As human settlements expand and elephant habitats contract, neither side has much room to retreat.
Rahmat remembers when the government installed solar-powered fencing to keep elephants away from settlements.
For a while, it worked.
"Some time ago, the government installed solar-powered fencing. For a while, the elephants stopped coming," he said. "But the system eventually broke down, and now they are coming back just as before."
His account points out a recurring problem in wildlife management: interventions that provide temporary relief but fail without maintenance or broader habitat protection.
The conflict has also acquired a cross-border dimension. For decades, elephant herds moved between the forests of India's Meghalaya and the Garo Hills of Bangladesh. Border fencing has disrupted that movement, leaving some herds increasingly confined to the Bangladeshi side.
On October 10, Environment, Forest and Climate Change Minister Abdul Awal Mintoo said Bangladesh would seek talks with India to restore a cross-border elephant corridor. He estimated that 130 to 135 elephants had become stranded in Sherpur because of border fencing.
The proposed talks underscore the scale of the problem. Protecting the elephants may require cooperation between two countries, alongside changes in how land is managed within Bangladesh.
Mohammad Jahangir Alam, an assistant professor of zoology at Sherpur Government College, told Waadaa that the conflict cannot be understood without considering the economic circumstances of people living near the forest.
"Elephants enter human settlements in search of food, while people living in the hills depend on agricultural land for their livelihoods and food security," he said.
Simply planting food for elephants, he argued, would not be enough.
"Their natural movement corridors and habitats must also be protected. A lasting solution is impossible if the needs of elephants and humans are considered separately."
Mugniur Rahman Moni, executive director of the environmental organisation SHINE, sees the same pressure from both directions.
"The space available to elephants in the Garo Hills is shrinking, while land is also limited for people living in the hills," he told Waadaa.
"As people confront elephants while trying to protect their crops, elephants are entering human settlements because they are losing their natural habitats."
Moni called for stronger measures against forest encroachment and unregulated settlements, alongside protection for farmers whose crops and livelihoods are threatened.
The Wildlife Management and Nature Conservation Department says it is trying to address some of these problems.
Md Abdullah Al Amin, a wildlife ranger with the department, told Waadaa that authorities had begun establishing food plantations for elephants in the Garo Hills, alongside efforts to protect habitats and promote coexistence.
Other measures, including Elephant Response Teams and fencing, have also been introduced in affected areas. Conservationists say restoring movement corridors and ensuring reliable compensation for crop losses will be essential to their success.
But the residents who live with the elephants are measuring progress differently.
They want to know whether their fields will survive the next visit, whether their houses will remain standing and whether they can move through their villages without fear.
For the elephants, the requirements are more basic: enough forest to live in, enough food to survive and safe passage between habitats. Both have become harder to secure.
Back in Chhoto Gajni, Rahmat's memories of the old fencing system offer a reminder of how quickly temporary improvements can disappear.
“Yes, for a brief period, the elephants stopped coming. Then the fencing failed, and the herds returned,” said Rahmat, “We are still waiting for the solution that lasts.”
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