The death of three wild elephants, two of which were calves, in the vicinity of the Rani reserved forest area in the south-western outskirts of Guwahati city on Friday is indeed tragic and calls for a serious review of the conservation efforts. As has been already reported, the pachyderms had come out of the forest in search of food and were electrocuted by a betel-nut tree, which they had pulled down and touched a high-voltage electric transmission line. Though APDCL has clarified that it was not a case of human-elephant conflict as the live wire was not lying on the ground and that it was the tree that came into contact with the live wire that caused the accident, the fact remains that it is an outcome of the rapid shrinking of elephant habitat in Assam. Guwahati itself has more than one wildlife sanctuary and several reserved forests in and around it with a large number of wild elephants, and increasing human interference has led to a lot of disturbances to the wild animals. Elephant deaths have become routine in the Rani-Garbhanga area, especially with the construction of a railway track between the forests and the Deepar Beel in the 1990s. With the authorities failing to prevent human intrusion and encroachment on these wildlife habitats, threats to the animals have only increased manifold in recent years. A section of political parties, instead of helping protect the forests and wildlife reserves, has only encouraged encroachment in the hills, forests, and wetlands in and around Guwahati. Amchang Wildlife Sanctuary, for instance, is the worst-affected wildlife reserve in the state, with more and more encroachers occupying land rightfully earmarked for wildlife. Even directives from the Gauhati High Court have reportedly gone in vain in evicting the encroachers. Assam is home to about 5,800 Asian elephants, the second-largest elephant population in India after Karnataka (6000+), a large number of which often come out of the forests in search of food. This leads to direct friction with humans, leading to a human-elephant conflict. It must, however, be accepted that this conflict is essentially one-sided because elephants have never come out to encroach upon human territory. Rather, the truth is that human beings are the perpetrators of this conflict.