2. INDIA SAVING ELEPHANTS FOR FOSTERITY

D.K. Lahiri-Choudhury writes on Project Elephant which is likely to break new grounds in the field

PROJECT Tiger: One of the great stories of in selected areas management limited to elimina- conservation in the last two decades, was laun- ting or at least minimizing human disturbance ched in lndia on April 1 ,1973, at the initiative and to repairing the damage already done by of the World Wildlife Fund. Tiger reserves help- man.t' ed to establish in lndia the concept of ecosys- tem conservation-a great leap forward from the In practice, the management of Tiger reser- era of game laws and "Closed season" regula- ves was based on the broad principle of "core tions. 4nd buffer", absolute protection to the former and exploitation according to the working plan Project Elephant, now under active conside- in the lattqr, which in effect meant exploitation ration of , is essentially an and human interference as usual in the buffer lndian baby. A modest outlay of Rs 20 crores is zone. The hypothesis behind the concept was being contemplated for the project for the re- the "spill over" theory : that wildlife, eventually maining years of the Eighth-Plan period- lt is would spread out from the absolutely protected likely to break new grounds and offer a model core to the buffer where conditions were expect- for such profect elsewhere in south and south- ed to improve under proper management having east Asia. a wildlife bias. The Ministry of Environment and Forests, The latest estimate (1985) would put the is currently hammering out the final shape of number of elephants in lndia somewhere bet- the project. The rationale seems to be that ele- ween 1 2,000 16,000, found in four widely - phant reserves established under the project separate geographical regions : (Ke- should aim at ensuring the longterm survival of rala, , and, of late, An- identified elephant populations by protecting dhra Pradesh): Eastern India (Orissa, south their entire ranges, consisting often, of overlapp- Bihar, south-western part of , and ing home ranges. Home range means the area very recently Sarguja civill distriet in the north- actually used by an animal or a group of ani- eastern corner of Madhya Pradesh); North In- mals; and population, in the case of elephants, dia (sub-Himalayan ); and North may be defined as animals sharing the same ter- East lndia (, , Manipur ritory . (seasonally migrant from Burma), , Mizoram, , Tripura, and northern Be- Elephants are long-ranging animals and an ngal). Without a special effort about 30o/o to 40% entire population may use a very large area. The of these animals may not have a chance of long- main problem of elephant preservation is one of term survival. preserving the geographical extent as well as the quality of wildlife habitat of these ranges. Project Elephant is likely to differ in many Unlike the tiger reserve, this cannot be done for significant ways from in its appro- - elephants in selected parcels of forest of limited ach to consevation. Project Tiger concentrated extent. lf the conservation and management exclusively on selected sites of limited extent. of entire elephant ranges or their selected parts As Mr. Sankhala, the first Director of Project Ti- is to be the principal objective of elephant reser- ger put it, the projebt was "committed to the ves, the core-buffer concept will be virtually use- philosophy of total environmental preservation less.

18 Nevertheless, the principle of total protec- in Bihar to East Midnapore Forest Division in tion will continue to apply to crucial habitat poc- West Bengal have wrought havoc. The. success kets, such as areas where elephants take shelter of Project Elephant may very well be judged in during the '"pinch" period; cover used as day- these areas rather than in the high-profile Ele- time refuge for nocturnal foraging: salt-licks to phant Reserves. which elephants return periodically for health- giving minerals and salt; and corridors linking The last question : why is the elephant so different parts of an elephant range. The mana- important? Apart from the position the elephant gement plan for an elephant reserve, therefore, has always occupied in lndia's history and cultu- wilf have to take into account the range-utiliza- re, the status of the elephant, because of the lar- tion strategy of elephants, as these crucial habi- ge demand the huge animal makes on its envi- tat pockets may very well be located in scattered ronment, indicates the health of its habitat. points in the range, not concentrated in one or A preliminary study has identified some target two compact pockets as in a tiger reserve. areas in the country for setting up elephant re- serves. lt is no surprise that these represent most Moreover, unlike the core areas in tiger re- of the meagre residue of close canopy natural serves the entire range of an elephant popula- forests still left in India-exceptions are Madhya tion cannot, in lndian conditions, be insulated Pradesh (barring the recent incursion from Bi- from disturbance by man. Because range mana- har) and Maharashtra, where there are no elep- gement involves managing very large tracts-much hants, probably due to historical reasons. larger than the average tiger reserve-socio-eco- nomic problems arising from the establishment Proiect Elephant may be our last chance to of elephant reserves should be a major concern save for posterity these areas of highest species of the managers. As a result the "philosophy" diversity consisting of the elephant and its asso- may have to be changed to an adjustment bet- ciate biota. Project Tiger and Project Elephant, ween the needs of wildlife and environment, and therefore, may be said to represent separate tac- needs of man, particularly of people in the fri- tical approaches to the same ultimate strategie nge areas dependent on forest resources for their ob jective. subsistence. (reprinted from The Saturday Statesman Another, equally important, obfective of 10 Nov. 1 990). Project Elephant would be devising plans for managing smaller populations or groups. This would extend the scope of the project beyond demarcated conservation areas like elephant re- serves to the management of the species as a whole. Thus, minimizing man-elephant con- frontation which has reached crisis level in some areas would be a crucial task of Project Ele- phant. ln 1988 in North Bengal 59 people lost their lives to elephants. In 1989 upto mid- December 52 people had been killed in Assam by elephants, the North Bengal figures for the year coming not too far behind. In 1990 upto 15 October, 46 people had been killed by ele- phants in North Bengal, and the worst phase of the depredation season is yet to come. Elephants from Tamil Nadu straying to : from Porahat Forest Division in Singbhum civil district of Bihar to Sarguja civil district of Ma- dhya Pradesh: from Dalma Wildlife Sanetuary 'Wh@, Flonk....Gu€Ei wlrql youuuuuuruu 19