Chennai, 6 September, 2019: Supporting our call to action on Right of Passage for elephants, Southern Railways hosted a regional workshop to discuss the future course of action to reduce elephant mortalities due to collision with speeding trains. The workshop was hosted at the Southern Railways headquarters in Chennai, in collaboration with Wildlife Trust of India and Project Elephant, Ministry of Environment Forests and Climate Change (MoEF & CC).

Senior officials of the southern railways, Forest Department of Tamil Nadu, Kerala and Karnataka, and various NGOs and individuals participated in this day-long workshop. This regional workshop was an outcome of the National Workshop on mitigation of elephant mortalities due to train hits, previously organized in Delhi in March 2019.Reaching out to linear infrastructure development agencies to sensitise them on the need for secure corridors for wildlife movement is a critical part of WTI’s signature campaign, the Gaj Yatra in Tamil Nadu that is supported by Tata Chemicals Limited. Conducted under the umbrella project Right of Passage, this aims to generate public and political will and mobilize the necessary efforts to secure the 101 corridors for India’s National Heritage Animal, the Asian elephant.

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Dr. K Selvan, Scientist-Project Elephant, MoEF & CC opened the workshop followed Mr Vivek Menon, WTI’s ED and CEO highlighting the need and importance of such workshops. “The Elephant is a key stakeholder and should be kept in mind for any linear infrastructure planning through forests or corridors. Elephants must get their Right of Passage otherwise the problem just keeps shifting from one place to another”, he said.

Mr Rahul Jain (General Manager, Southern Railways) appreciated the efforts of Forest Ministry and WTI for the workshop and highlighted the issues specific to the Coimbatore-Walayar Track where maximum train-hit casualties have occurred in Southern India. He requested for solutions from all gathered to mitigate the problem and the Railways would be ready to support the implementation. Long term solutions like overpasses is also possible. Mr. PK Mishra- Additional General Manager- Southern Railways, informed everyone that even Railways have the ‘Right of Way’, so Right of Passage for Elephants is equally important and is possible. Substantial work has been done to mitigate the train hit deaths in the last 2-3 years and with all our inputs will strive towards mitigating it further. Mr. S. Anantharaman (Principal Chief Operations Manager, Southern Railways) agreed, “Railways are aware of the grave issue of train hits. We look forward to bridge the gap so that Railways can understand the ecology of elephants better and thus take necessary reduce casualties”. Mr. Noyal Thomas, IG-Project Elephant looked forward to increased coordination between Southern Railways and Forest Department citing the example of Rajaji where WTI had worked for a decade with Railways and the Forest Department resulting in zero elephant mortalities due to train hits. Mr. Surendra Kumar, Chief Wildlife Warden-Kerala, further added that Forest Department is aware of the regular elephant crossing points and will help Railways with all information needed.

Several positive outcomes emerged from the workshop, with the southern railways assuring imposition of speed restrictions in identified critical segments of the Walayar – Kanjikode section of railway tracks in the Palghat region of Tamil Nadu & Kerala. Officers of the southern railways present also assured to implement various other mitigation measures in different identified tracks, such as ensuring joint night patrolling with forest departments staff, construction of low cost ramps for elephants to cross across safely across critical sections on identified railway stretches, providing a special addendum to station working groups through the railway headquarters, outlining when to issue caution orders and how to deal with elephants on or near tracks. They also assured to take up discussions of new plans of railway track expansions in the three states with the Wildlife Trust of India in order to accommodate mitigation measures before their establishment.