In the last three years, over a thousand persons have been killed by elephants with reported damages to 15, 312 houses and 87,269 cases of crop damage by pachyderms, forcing state governments in the country to pay approximately Rs 30.29 crore as compensation.
On the other side of the spectrum, over 69 elephants died of unnatural causes during 2008-09, of which 15 were poached and 54 died of other causes including electrocution and train accidents. In West Bengal alone, 17 pachyderms died in train accidents between 2000-07. However, the situation can be expected to change over the coming years with the Ministry of Environment and Forests (MoEF) mulling over complete overhaul of its flagship elephant conservation programme — Project Elephant.
Launched in 1992, as a Centrally-sponsored scheme, Project Elephant was primarily aimed at protecting elephant, their habitats and corridors as well as addressing issues of man-animal conflict and welfare of domesticated elephants. In recent years, though, the project has run aground. The MoEF is to set up an expert panel comprising conservation experts and governments officials to look into the existing flaws in the scheme and recommend measures to mitigate the erosion of elephant habitat, apart from examining other related issues. Subsequently, the committee is slated to submit a comprehensive report to the MoEF by May this year, MoEF sources said.
“It will be a comprehensive study which will include capacity building measures, man-power augmentation, ramping up infrastructure and an increase in funding. The idea is to bring Project Elephant at par with Project Tiger,” the source said. Unlike the high-profile Project Tiger, the elephant conservation scheme has not only received significantly lower exposure, but the funding provided to Project Elephant has been about one-sixth of that given to the former. According to government data for 2007-2008, Rs 16.40 crore was released for Project Elephant, compared to Rs 62.70 crore that was allocated to Project Tiger during the same period.
This paucity of money is despite the fact that almost all critical tiger habitats are also home to elephants and that the status of elephants are widely considered to be a good indicator of the condition of a forest. So far, over 60,000 sq km have been designated as elephant reserves, while critical tiger habitat in India comprises about 40,000 sq km.
Experts, however, feel that a reworking of the existing mechanism underlying Project Elephant is more fundamental to the success of the programme, rather than just a rise in funding.
“Project Elephant has never been led by the sort of people who set up and executed Project Tiger. Both the projects must be synergised and a systematic overhaul of the scheme (for elephant conservation) is needed rather than just an increase in funding. If taken together, these two projects will comprise the largest climate change mitigation effort in the country,” environmentalist Bittu Sahgal said.
