Elephant locations in Nepal

56 locations has kept elephants in Nepal

There is presently 183 (51,107) living elephants in locations in Nepal in this database

Nepal
Region: Nepal is in this database included in asia
Wild elephants: Nepal has about 126 (min. 109, max. 142) wild elephants. Source:Pradhan et al. (2011)
Location holdings: 56 locations has kept 226 elephants in Nepal

(Database tables with collection of elephants further down on the page)
Elephants in locations183 (51,107) living 43 (16,17) dead


1914: A total of 17 captive elephants were released into the wild in 1914

1945-1970: 10 wild elephants were captured for taming during 1954-1970.

1973: capture of wild elephants became strictly prohibited.

Wild elephants


Many wild elephants migrate between India and Nepal, where rapidly rising human populations devastated lowland forest herds. Small herds have stabilised in protected reserves.

1996: population was estimated to 50-60 (Santiapillai, IUCN 1996).

2008: 100-170 (Sukumar 2008)

2011: 128 elephants. (Pradhan et al., 2011)

Captive elephants


Gaja or Prasad denotes a male, and Kali denotes a female elephant.

Phanit denotes an official driver and senior keeper, Pachuwa: assistant, and Mahut, 2nd assistant.

The Rana rulers established Hattisars (elephant stables) as part of their big game hunting exploits. Between 1898 and 1970 there were 31 such hattisars for captive elephants, stretching from Jhapa in east Nepal to Kanchanpur in far west Nepal. The last wild elephant was captured near Parsa in 1969

Government elephant stables are called sarkari hattisar.

2011: 236 registered captive elephants. (Locke, 2011)

2014: Nepal has about 150 captive elephants under both government and private individuals distributed in three locations such us the Suklaphanta Wildlife Reserve, Chitwan National Park, Parsa Wildlife Reserve, Koshi Tappu Wildlife Reserve and Bardia National Park.
Surendra Varma, Suparna Ganguly (2011)

Other sources state: There are around 200 captive elephants in Nepal. Around 100 of them are owned by the Department of National Park and Wildlife Conservation and 100 by private institutions
Jeewan Thapa


Unlike the rhino, numbers of wild Asian elephants (Elephas maximus) have not rebounded, with approximately the same number of wild individuals (~150) as those held in captivity remaining (GoN, 2015).

Previous studies have indicated that at least 23% of the captive elephants in Sauraha carry tuberculosis, but due to difficulties with owner compliance regarding treatment, unreliable testing methods, and overall concern for the cost of treatment means that elephants remain undiagnosed and contagious (Gairhe, 2012; Mikota et al., 2015; see also Paudel & Sreevatsan, 2020). More than 12 captive elephants have died of tuberculosis since 2002 (Mandal & Khadka, 2013; Thapa, et. al, 2017, Szydlowski, 2021), yet infected individuals remain within shared spaces, increasing the risk of further transmission (Gairhe, 2012).
Michelle Szydlowski, Elephants in Nepal


Bardia


17 elephants have 41 handlers in the Bardia National Park. All the adult female elephants had been bought. Surendra Varma, Suparna Ganguly (2011)



Recommended Citation

Koehl, Dan, Facts about elephants in Nepal. Elephant Encyclopedia, (2025) available online retrieved 2025-04-25 at https://www.elephant.se/country.php?name=Nepal.
(archived at the Wayback machine)

Sources, among others


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