IWN Original Report — Tuesday, 14 April 2026
India’s most-awaited highway opened today — and wildlife, it turns out, didn’t wait for the ribbon-cutting ceremony. As Prime Minister Narendra Modi inaugurated the 213-kilometre Delhi–Dehradun Economic Corridor, a quietly significant study was already in circulation: 18 species of wild animals have been documented using the specially built underpasses along the expressway’s forest stretch, offering early evidence that roads and wildlife don’t have to be enemies.
The study, titled Landscapes Reconnected, was conducted jointly by the National Highways Authority of India (NHAI) and the Wildlife Institute of India (WII). Researchers worked along an 18-kilometre stretch between Ganeshpur and Asharodi in the Shivalik range — sal forest terrain adjacent to Rajaji National Park, and known habitat for tigers, elephants, greater hornbills and king cobras.
Over 40 days, 150 camera traps and 29 acoustic recorders generated more than 1.11 lakh images. Of these, over 40,000 showed 18 wild species moving through the underpasses: golden jackals (the most frequent), nilgai, sambar, chital, Indian hare — and, perhaps most strikingly, elephants, recorded on 60 separate occasions navigating passages built up to seven metres high. NHAI describes the overall structure as one of Asia’s largest elevated wildlife corridors, spanning nearly 11 kilometres of the 20-kilometre forest section.
Sound is the hidden barrier
The study’s most nuanced finding concerns noise. Generalist species like wild boar and golden jackals have habituated well to the din of traffic; sensitive animals — elephants and spotted deer especially — use only the quieter sections of the underpasses. The data suggest that sound, more than the physical structure itself, determines which species will and will not cross. NHAI says it will now deploy targeted sound barriers in the zones where noise-sensitive species are most likely to cross, with the aim of encouraging broader use.
The ecological stakes are considerable. The Shivalik landscape is one of India’s critical connectivity corridors — a forest belt linking protected areas on either side of what is now a six-lane, access-controlled highway. Fragmentation here risks isolating populations of large mammals, reducing genetic exchange and raising the probability of human–wildlife conflict at forest fringes. The study argues that the corridor design, thus far, has helped prevent exactly that.
A model, or a milestone?
The data are early, and the road has only just opened to full traffic. Camera-trap monitoring during construction is not the same as monitoring under operational load — with thousands of vehicles a day, ambient noise levels will rise and animal behaviour may shift in ways the study could not anticipate. Conservation advocates have long pushed back against the framing that any highway in forested land is automatically benign as long as underpasses exist. The real test begins today.
Still, the design philosophy on display here — elevated corridors, acoustic monitoring, species-specific engineering — represents a more considered approach than India has historically applied to highway projects cutting through forest. The study’s use of AudioMoth acoustic recorders alongside camera traps is itself a methodological step up; understanding soundscape dynamics, not just animal counts, gives planners something genuinely useful to work with.
If the data hold under real-world conditions, Landscapes Reconnected may become a reference document for road planners across the subcontinent — a proof of concept that infrastructure and ecology can, with sufficient care, share the same ground.
Sources: PIB press release, 11 April 2026 · Down To Earth · Outlook Traveller · The Tribune