Three northeastern states have been included in the list of 101 elephant corridors on which Wildlife Trust of India (WTI) and respective state governments are working to protect the same for wild pachyderms.
The three states from Northeast India are Assam, Meghalaya and Arunachal Pradesh.
“We are working on 101 reserved elephant corridors with different state governments and the respective forest departments so that the corridors remain intact,” said Upasana Ganguly, head of WTI’s wild lands division.
She said seven corridors have been blocked over the last few years.
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“These were either blocked or closed due to rapid industrialisation and developing townships,” said Ganguly.
It was in 2012 when the WTI conducted a survey across India and found 101 existing elephant corridors.
Apart from the three northeastern states, the other states of the country where the elephant corridors exist are Kerala, Karnataka, Tamil Nadu, Chhattisgarh, Jharkhand, Odisha, West Bengal and Uttarakhand.
The WTI is working on the ‘Right of Passage: The National Elephant Corridors Project’ in these states.
In the northeastern, man-elephant conflicts are mostly reported from Assam and Meghalaya every year.
“As per an estimate 400-450 people die in man-elephant conflicts every year whereas the elephant casualty crosses 100,” said the WTI official.
