Our Projects

Ryaan Ranch Wildlife Trust decided to create safe, practical crossing points so elephants could move more freely between different parts of the ranch. During 2025–2026, the Trust built three bridges across the canal. Each crossing provides a broad path over the canal, with a pipe underneath to maintain the flow of water.

The work began with preparing the canal and placing the pipes. The crossing surfaces and supporting structures were then built above them. The three bridges were positioned at separate points along the canal, giving elephants more than one place to cross as they move through the property.

We are now seeing the value of this work. Elephants have been observed using the bridges to cross the canal and move between areas of the ranch. Watching them choose these routes has been an encouraging result for everyone involved in the project.

Creating safe passage is an ongoing part of caring for wildlife habitat. The Trust will continue to observe how elephants use the crossings and maintain them as part of its wider work to help wildlife move safely through Ryaan Ranch.

The water body also contributes to maintaining suitable habitat conditions and encourages wildlife to continue using the area as part of their natural movement and habitat-use patterns. The initiative is intended to strengthen the availability of essential water resources while maintaining a natural and minimally disturbed environment.

The continued use of water sources within Ryaan Ranch by wild elephants demonstrates the importance of maintaining such habitat features as part of the Trust’s conservation activities.

We installed green lights at all three bridges to mark the designated crossing points. Red lights were placed along sections of the open trench, where an elephant attempting to cross could slip or be injured. We also installed solar-powered cameras at the bridges to monitor elephant movement, including activity when our team is not present.

The cameras are an important part of this work. They allow us to see where elephants approach the canal, which crossings they use and how they move through the ranch. This helps the Trust assess the arrangements based on observed behaviour and identify anything that may need attention, such as a damaged crossing or a change in the route elephants take.

Our observations so far have been encouraging: elephants captured during monitoring have crossed by the bridges marked with green lights rather than through the open trench. Seeing them use the intended routes is a meaningful outcome for the team that planned and built the crossings.

We are continuing to study the footage. The observations show which routes elephants are taking, but they do not yet establish whether the colour of the lights itself influences their choices. The bridges may also be attractive because they provide easier ground underfoot. Continued monitoring will help us understand how elephants use these routes across different conditions and seasons.

The lights, cameras and bridges form one practical effort to reduce a known risk within the ranch. Ryaan Ranch Wildlife Trust will keep maintaining the system and watching how the elephants respond. Our aim is simple: to let elephants move through the land with fewer obstacles and less risk of injury.

This discovery is consistent with what we have observed elsewhere on the ranch. Our team has seen a leopard moving through the area on several occasions, and signs near the pond suggest it returns regularly. The pond appears to be part of its route through the land and may provide a place to drink.

Finding these tracks reminds us that the pond supports more than one kind of wildlife. Water draws animals with different needs and habits, including species that people may rarely see even when they pass nearby. The prints in the damp soil give us a glimpse of that activity after the animal has moved on.

We document observations like these to better understand which animals use the ranch and when they visit its water sources. The Trust will continue to monitor the pond while giving wildlife space to move undisturbed. For our team, the pugmarks are an encouraging sign that the water we provide is available to animals passing through Ryaan Ranch.

Cattle egrets gather in the trees and forage across the open land, sometimes close to grazing animals. At the pond, we have photographed other egrets wading through the shallow water and an Asian woolly-necked stork among them. A Brahminy kite has also been seen on the ranch, its white head and chestnut body making it easy to recognise.

Smaller birds bring colour to the landscape. We have photographed a blue-tailed bee-eater perched above the grassland and recorded a white-throated kingfisher beside the pond on our camera. These sightings show how the same area can offer birds different places to perch, search for food and spend time near water.

Ryaan Ranch Wildlife Trust created and maintains a pond for wild animals when natural water sources dry during the summer. Birds are among the visitors we now observe around it. The photographs and camera records help us build a picture of which species are present and how they use the land.

We hope to keep a record of bird sightings across the seasons. That will help us distinguish birds regularly present at Ryaan Ranch from seasonal visitors, while giving us a fuller understanding of the wildlife supported by its ponds, grassland and trees.

During one field observation, our team found a plastic bag among a dung deposit. Its presence is concerning, but the photograph alone cannot establish whether the elephant swallowed the plastic or whether it reached the dung afterward. Either possibility points to the need to keep plastic waste away from areas used by wildlife.

Ryaan Ranch Wildlife Trust would welcome carefully planned research into elephant movement, feeding habits and the environmental pressures they encounter. With appropriate methods and permissions, researchers could document dung deposits, examine plant material and other contents, and compare findings across locations and seasons. Such work could help build a clearer picture of how elephants use the ranch and the wider landscape.

For our team, this observation is a reminder that protecting elephant passage also means paying attention to the condition of the land they travel through. We will continue to document what we find, remove litter where it is safe to do so, and support efforts to reduce plastic waste in wildlife areas.

Ryaan Ranch provided the participating children with necessary football kits and other essential sports-related requirements for the tournament. The support was intended to reduce practical barriers to participation and enable the children to participate with appropriate equipment and preparation.

The Trust views such initiatives as an important component of its broader community engagement efforts, particularly in forest-fringe and tribal communities, where opportunities for organised sporting activities and access to sports equipment may be limited.