At least 500 people and 100 elephants are killed every year in the country due to human-elephant conflict, the Union Ministry of Environment, Forest and Climate Change (MoEFCC) said on Monday.
“There are 30,000 pachyderms in the wild and another 2,700 are in captivity,” said MoEFCC officials while releasing a document on best practices of conflict management and a portal on addressing the human-elephant conflict cases.
The financial contribution to states for payment of compensation and other conflict mitigation strategies had been increased by 30 per cent in the present financial year, the officials added.
It was also informed that new elephant reserves have been declared, apart from identifying elephant corridors in the past five years to address the problem.
Elephants have also been included in appendix 1 of the Convention on the Conservation of Migratory Species of Wild Animals to ensure better conservation, they added.
It was also informed the population and distribution of elephants in the country have been on the rise and elephants have been migrating from Jharkhand to Chhattisgarh to Madhya Pradesh and Maharashtra.