Elephant fatalities will be reduced by 'trunk routes' over busy roads and railway tracks in national park

This article is more than 11 years old

This article is more than 11 years old

Indian authorities are about to build the world's first "flyover" routes for elephants to save them from accidents on roads and railways.

The jumbo trunk roads, costing £9m, will be built to stop accidents on roads and railway lines that cross Rajaji national park in Uttarakhand state near the Himalayan foothills.

Two flyovers, each 1.2km long and 100 metres wide, will be covered in foliage to resemble the natural environment and encourage the animals to use them. At least 118 Asian elephants, an endangered species, have died on rail lines in India since 1987.

Highway authority plans to expand a road through the park into a four-lane highway between the pilgrim towns of Haridwar and Rishikesh have exacerbated the problem.

The solution came as plans for a vehicle flyover and an underground rail tunnel were ruled out as technically too problematic.

The park's 400 wild elephants, which usually roam in search of fresh watering holes, will enter wide funnels at either end of the elevated corridors and then be channelled on to bridges over the deadly roads.

"The elephants are very sensitive to vibrations but the experts think that if the flyover is high enough they can cross," director of conservation for the Wildlife Trust of India, Dr Rahul Kaul, told the Guardian.

"You have to get it right first time. The problem is that there are no examples, no precedents in the world at the moment," he added.

The plan comes after six years of exhaustive efforts to prevent the accidents, including night patrols and an awareness campaign for train drivers. There have been no recorded human casualties and only one recorded derailment.

Steep embankments that prevented elephants from avoiding oncoming trains have also been flattened out.

This put a temporary halt to deaths – 20 between 1992 and 2002 – on the 18km stretch of track that passes through the protected area, but park authorities wanted a long-term solution.

Rajaji national park, which covers an area of 820 square kilometres, has fossil remains of 50 elephant species that date back 10m years.

The Asiatic elephant, Elephas maximus, is the largest land mammal in Asia, weighing up to five tonnes, with a life expectancy of 70 years. There are about 35,000 Asian elephants in India and 12 other countries in south-east Asia.

Two adults, including a pregnant female, and a juvenile male of about six years were hit and killed in the last recorded train incident in February 2008 in the Coimbatore district of the southern Indian state of Tamil Nadu.

If the flyovers in Rajaji are given the go-ahead by India's supreme court, they are likely to be completed in nine months.

The ambitious project is a rare victory for conservation in India, which has seen the population of its national animal, the Bengal tiger, reduced to about 1,400 – more than half have been lost in the past five years.