Palakkad, May 26, 2015: The third consultative workshop on elephant corridors of Kerala was conducted in Palakkad, Kerala, on May 26, 2015. This workshop was jointly organised by WTI, Project Elephant, Ministry of Environment, Forests & Climate Change and Kerala Forest Department.

The meeting was chaired by Pramod G Krishnan, IFS, Chief Conservator of Forests, Wildlife, Northern region, Government of Kerala and attended by Dr P S Easa, Former Director, Kerala Forest Research Institute. Moreover, seven Divisional Forest Officers, two Wildlife Wardens, two Assistant Conservators of Forests, two Deputy Directors, seven Range officers, two Wildlife Biologists, a technical assistant and nine WTI staff also attended the workshop.

Pramod G Krishnan and Dr P S Easa spoke about the overview of elephant conservation in Kerala and their issues and challenges. Dr Sandeep Tiwari, Deputy Director, WTI, gave a presentation on the concept of corridor and the various forms of corridors as well as the various models used to protect and secure the corridors. Processes followed to groundtruth the corridors were also explained.

K Ramkumar, Assistant Manager & Project Lead, WTI, presented the draft report comprising present status, threats and conservation plan for five corridors of Kerala (including new one) for open discussion. All the existing corridors and new corridors were discussed in great detail and approved with few minor changes. In continuation of the workshop, WTI team visited two elephant corridors in Kerala and cross checked the information as suggested from the workshop.

To finalise the list of elephant corridors and discuss the corridor report prepared for each state, WTI has proposed to organise consultative workshops in 13 corridor range states. The consultative workshops involving State Forest Department, elephant conservationists, researchers, NGOs and other stake holders are being organised to review the information collected for the identified corridors and finalisation of the reports based on inputs from the participants.

The workshop will also be utilised as a platform to develop consensus among the state, Project Elephant, conservation organisations and researchers on the list of corridors. Two consultative workshops have already been organised in Odisha and Jharkhand in January 2015