At first, we should understand the definition of ‘corridor’ in wildlife science. In general, we define corridor as a narrow passageway or route. In the year 1991 two scientist, Prof. Soule and Gilpin provided a clear and concise definition of wildlife corridor – “a linear two-dimensional landscape element that connects two or more patches of wildlife (animal) habitat that have been connected in historic times; it is meant as a conduit for animals”. After that in the year 1995, another scientist Rosenburg described this definition more elaborately that –corridor is a patch that provides the survivorship, natality (birthrate) and movement to sustain a healthy population. Now what is ‘patch population’? It means a randomly distributed, separated and scattered group of animals with very low number of individuals. But why these patch populations are very important? Because there are very less genetic variations due to inbreeding i.e., breeding only among those specific individuals of certain population. It eventually results the loss of genes, known as ‘Genetic Drift’ which gradually leads to the extinction. So, the wildlife corridors should be conserved to maintain the genetic variation through free movement, random sexual breeding and finally to keep an animal alive in a healthy condition.
Along with these, specifically for elephant two more important reasons are there to conserve these corridors. Firstly, to provide an undisrupted food supply – elephants need a huge food supply due to its size, social behaviour to be together or with family, foraging or feeding habit and its fodder composition. For food, more complexities appear due to the presence of animals with similar feeding habit & habitats, i.e., big herbivores like – rhino. This phenomenon known as ‘Habitat Overlap’. The second one is migration. Actually, elephants migrate all over the day to find the food and its probable stray points for resting. Mostly elephants don’t stay at a place more than 2-3 days. As they are moving as a family or herd, they need more space and foods. That’s why they are also called as ‘Giant Migrator of Forest’.
According to the report ‘Elephant Corridors of India’ (2023), published by MoEFCC & WII, a total of 150 elephant corridors were reported from 15 elephant range states across the four elephant-bearing regions of India. West Bengal holds the first position with 26 recognized elephant corridors as this state share two separate population from two different region (Northern Bengal as a part of North East Region & Southern Bengal as a part of East Central Region). A significant number of corridors (126) are transboundary (interstate) in nature with a real challenge of management and monitoring. These corridors are identified through ground truthing, by validating the Forest Department documents and most importantly regular & systematic monitoring & mapping. Monitoring & mapping is done through continuous tracking of elephants’ movements and depending on the movement tracks, the corridors can be further differentiated into sub corridors featuring small distance, less or occasional usage and minute landmarks (waterbody, stray points, geographical barrier etc.). As example, Northern Bengal
consists of 14 recognized corridors but have near about 49 distinguished sub corridors with different features. In case of Tamil Nadu, as per the report ‘Elephant Corridors of India’ (2023), there are total 20 corridors but Tamil Nadu government declared total 42 corridors in the year 2024 by their specially constituted panel, is another example of minutely scrutinized and experimented approach to identify the corridors.
Now, as corridors are connecting pathways, most of the corridors situated across the non- forested landscapes including tea & coffee estates, human settlements, linear infrastructures (roads, rail lines), streams & rivers, agricultural fields, barren lands. Due to rapid growing of human population, the increment of agricultural land by converting the forest areas is also taking place very fast. Due to the easy availability of good food from agricultural fields, behavioral changes (like – early maturity, long stray time in one place), the intervention by both lone tuskers and group of elephants is increasing day by day. From this point the challenges for both elephant corridors and human-elephant coexistence starts. In one hand corridors should be properly managed, maintained & monitored to conserve it for the sake of ecology & nature. Other side, the loss & damage of lives, crops & other properties should be avoided from conflicts. Not only elephants, but also dangers due to leopards, rhinos, hyaenas are there, as these wild animals overlapping their habitats in most of the elephant dominated landscapes. So, at the time of managing and planning of a conflict mitigation framework in corridor surrounding areas, it should be done not only focusing some specific species or areas but as an overall approach covering whole natural landscape, both govt. & non-govt. stakeholders and most importantly local human communities.
As we all know the best approach of in-situ conservation is protected areas (PAs), in the form of National Park, Sanctuary, Reserve Forest & Community Forest. But for PAs major social issue is – acquiring lands from the indigenous, rural & poor people. Along with their lands as a permanent estate, the forest is also inextricably connected with the cultural life, livelihood and traditions of rural people. So, it is very hard to conserve any wildlife by evacuating the indigenous people thoroughly, overcoming the legal complications and finally suppressing the human rights. That’s why any state should follow a very critical & complicated mechanism to maintain a proper human-wildlife coexistence scenario. For this case, the roles of government departments must be concrete and integrated. As a part of the government’s duty, they have to pay a proper & timely compensation to the affected people, increase the budget for forest department, fulfill the vacancies of concerned departments, increase the number of forest guards, train the forest officials with knowledge and so on. As corridors are situated across the
different landscapes, there should be a strong co-ordination mechanism among Agriculture Department, MoEFCC, Forest Department, Irrigation Department, Indian Army (for border locations), State Police Departments, Disaster Management Departments & most importantly local Panchayats. In present situation, our central govt. & most of the state govts. are neglecting all the aforementioned accountabilities and there is very poor integration among the departments for policy & decision making. But we can’t deny that the state governments of Southern India like – Kerala, Tamil Nadu, Karnataka, is giving special attention towards the wildlife for a sustainable future. They are also giving more importance to the special govt. affiliated institutions like – AIWC (Tamil Nadu), KFRI (Kerala) etc.
As the non-govt. stakeholders like – owners of tea & coffee estates, owners of agricultural
lands, farmers, local residents are playing a crucial role in ‘community-based conservation’ i.e., conservation with help of the local communities, a strong bond and trust should be grown between govt. officials and them. But unfortunately, in India, mostly this communication is not smooth and trustworthy. There are lots of reasons behind this poor relationship. Less compensation after damage, late response at the time of conflicts & suffering in livelihood due to tight forest laws are some of those major causes. Misbehaving of govt. officials, language & cultural differences, false allegations from both sides trigger the situation in many cases. To resolve this kind of miscommunications and grievances govt. have tried to take some steps, like – formation of Quick Response Teams by volunteering youth of surrounding villages & train them for emergency situation, train & aware the local school students, employing local people as forest guards both in permanent & contractual ways. But in reality QRT teams are
not that much equipped or trained. There are lots of rural villages without any kind of QRT. The pay scale between the contractual & permanent employees also brings inequalities, while the contractual employee belonging from local community is doing more risky jobs. Overall, the concerned govt. agencies connected with conservation program, managing & monitoring are lacking of budget, logistical supports and man power. Some environmental NGOs are trying to intervene in these critical situations and resolve it. But those organizations also have their own limitations. In many cases some false NGOs backed by big corporates acts as a tool of state repressions.
Recently Project Elephant launched in 1992 by Govt. of India reached 30 years in the year
2022. In these 30 years, India have achieved a remarkable position in Asian Elephant
conservation through several steps. The announcements of elephant reserves, introduction of early warning systems, collaboration with railway & highway authorities, use of AI technology, geospatial mapping of landscapes & LULC, preparation of conflict mitigation framework & field manual, development of rural communities with traditional knowledge system are some of the giant steps taken by Govt. of India to come this much long. A lot is still remaining to complete our journey towards a sustainable environment. I hope by overcoming all difficulties we will achieve it one day.
Author:
Sibaditya Mondal
(Ecologist)
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