Elephant deaths due to electrocution, running over by trains (accidents) and killing by people is due to human- animal conflict and could be tackled. Considerable work was done at IIIT Allahabad.
It is possible to detect and identify the animal crossing an imaginary sensor line. If the animal is near human habitation, human beings get warning and are advised to stay indoors. Once we know the path, may be we could leave green belt that provides fodder for the animal. In such cases, slowly the elephant is weaned away from its habit of entering human habitations. Near the sensor line, we could grow honey bee colonies and elephants do not like the honey bee sound. Tiger urine is a good deterrent. We could use baby elephant call to attract the group. We need to find suitable sounds ( frequencies) that elephants do not like
Elephant is intelligent and easily gets habituated to deterrent sounds. Its revenge \counter attacks could be bad.
The deaths at railway tracks are from 2 causes – elephant, because of its hierarchy does not take the train, a new animal, seriously. I saw an elephant swinging its trunk at the moving train nonchalantly (near Dehradun). The second reason is that the young calfs get stuck on the tracks and the herd would not move without the calf.
Electrocution of elephants: This easily could be handled provided power is taken from a known point. The phase and neutral currents should be equal. When there is electrocution, they will not be as part of the current goes to earth(leakage). When we detect leakage, the power gets switched off.
Prof Radhakrishna, IIIT Allahabad