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Jumbo census ends in southern India
A three-day census of wild elephants in southern India, home to one of the largest elephant concentrations in Asia, has just ended.
A three-day census of wild elephants in southern India, home to one of the largest elephant concentrations in Asia, has just ended.
The headcount was done in a 3,000 sq km area in Karnataka, Kerala and Tamil Nadu. Wild elephants in the states move between the forests of the three states through traditional routes known as elephant corridors.
According to the government, India still has more than 27,600 elephants, including the domesticated ones -- and southern India alone accounts for more than half of them. But wildlife experts contest this.
Some 600 officials and an equal number of volunteers criss-crossed the Mudumalai, Bandipur, Coimbatore, Anaimalai, Kalakkad-Mundanthurai and Parambikulam forests in search of the animal from Thursday to Saturday.
"The result will be available by May 15," said T. Sekar, conservator of forests for the Coimbatore circle.
The Asian elephant is an endangered species. It is relentlessly poached for ivory and elephants have almost vanished from China and Southwest Asia. India is among the few Asian countries that boast of a large elephant population.
The census focused on the demographic profile of the herds, classifying them as adults, sub-adults, juvenile calves, male, female and 'makhna' (male elephant without tusks).
The exercise will help plan water and fodder availability in the reserve forests.
"The growth in animal population will indicate the health of the habitat and success of conservation programmes," one conservator said.
The census teams looked for elephants when they came to water bodies.
"The counting teams looked at blobs of dung in line transects, their size, shape and freshness which help in estimating the size of the herd," said C. Soundarrajan of the Nilgiris Wildlife and Environment Association.
For the last two years, the association has undertaken a study of the elephant corridor usage in the Nilgiri hill ranges, northwest Tamil Nadu, Karnataka (Mysore forests) and north Kerala.
The census included the block count that cover 30 per cent of the surveyed forests. Following demonstration from an international organisation Rhinowatch, non-invasive monitoring through computer analysis of pugmark was attempted, experts said.
Soundarrajan told IANS that experts from the Bangalore Institute of Science and the Wildlife Institute of India will be associated in the count along with students and wildlife enthusiasts.
In Tamil Nadu, the Indian gaur, spotted sambar, barking deer and the panther family were also counted. The lion-tailed macaque and the Nilgiris tahr will be counted by May-end.
Through earlier surveys, the number of elephants in Karnataka has been put at 6,088, the highest in any Indian state. Kerala and Tamil Nadu have 5,737 and 2,971 elephants respectively.
In Tamil Nadu and Kerala, the elephants range covers 7,000 sq km of forest area. In the Eastern Ghats, extending all over Karnataka and Tamil Nadu, the elephant terrain is contiguous with that of the Nilgiris.
In the Nilgiris biosphere area of 5,520 sq km, spreading across the three states, the elephant population is estimated to be just 500.
The total elephant range in the Anaimalai-Parambikulam corridor in Tamil Nadu and Kerala is more than 2,500 sq km, where some 1,000 elephants live.
Elephants also live in the Periyar plateau, in Kerala's Nilambur-Silent Valley reserve, North Kanara, Karnataka's Western Ghats and Malnad Plateau-Bhadra area besides the Biligiri Rangaswamy Temple Wildlife sanctuary.
