Experts meet to discuss elephant conservation in Uttarakhand
Dehradun (Uttarakhand): For long-term conservation of Asian elephants in the northern Indian state of Uttarakhand, experts met in Dehradun last week for a two-day workshop to discuss ways of securing critical elephant corridors and mitigating human-elephant conflicts.
The workshop organised jointly by the Uttarakhand Forest Department, Project Elephant and Wildlife Trust of India (WTI), began Thursday at the Forest Research Institute. Experts from the Forest Department, NGOs including TRAFFIC India and Nature Conservation Foundation, institutions such as Wildlife Institute of India and Indira Gandhi National Forest Academy as well as representatives of the Railways participated in the workshop.
Uttarakhand has 11 critical corridors linking isolated elephant habitats, that support a population of about 1300 Asian elephants. Securing these corridors, afflicted by various degrees of degradation, is vital for sustaining the elephants in long-term.
“All elephant corridors in Uttarakhand have human imprints within. These disturbances, occur in the form of human settlements, encroachments, infrastructure such as roads/railway tracks, mining, biotic pressure like cattle grazing, firewood extraction etc and severely affect movement of elephants. This threatens to create genetically isolated populations and also aggravates human-elephant conflict situations negatively impacting both elephants as well as humans,” said Dr Sandeep Kumar Tiwari, Manager, WTI.
The workshop aimed to review the status of the corridors in Uttarakhand and to develop plans to secure them. It also aimed to develop effective plans for mitigation of human-elephant conflicts within the state.
“Over the past few years, WTI with the support of World Land Trust (WLT) and Elephant Family (EF) have been working to secure critical elephant corridors across India. For example, parts of Wayanad Corridor in Kerala have been secured by facilitating voluntary relocation of settlements within, using the pioneering technique of land purchase and resettlement. In Uttarakhand, we have begun demarcating the corridors, to facilitate securement by the government,” added Dr Tiwari.
Among other issues, the workshop also analysed respective roles of the Indian Railways and Highway Authorities in preventing elephant deaths due to accidents.
Railway movement in elephant habitats is one of the major threats to elephants across the range states in India. In Uttarakhand alone, 21 elephants have been killed due to railway accidents in the last 20 years.
However, a successful intervention has been carried out in Rajaji National Park where no elephant deaths due to train accidents have been recorded since 2002. A film titled ‘On the right track’ which documents this intervention, was screened during the workshop.
“Using recommendations of a WTI-IFAW study conducted in 2001, Uttarakhand Forest Department and Northern Railways have been able to maintain a record zero deaths of elephants due to train accidents in Rajaji. These interventions could be implemented elsewhere in the country with necessary modifications as per local needs,” said Dr Anil Kumar Singh, who has been coordinating WTI’s Train Hits Mitigation Project.
Several recommendations resulted from the workshop. These recommendations will help set priorities for future action on conservation of elephants in the state.
