Elephant conservation: Explained, pointwise

Introduction

As World Elephant Day is celebrated, India takes pride in its significant elephant numbers. Elephant conservation has been largely a success story as India is home to about 30,000 elephants, which is more than 60% of the global wild Asian elephant population. The population in India is distributed across southern, northeastern, east-central and northern regions. While the number of elephants in India has increased in the past few years, the species is listed as ‘Endangered’ on the IUCN Red List of threatened species. India acknowledges the importance of elephants by recognising them as National Heritage Animal.

What is the role of elephants in the ecosystem?

Elephants serve a critical role in the ecosystem and are therefore known as a keystone species. Keystone species are those that provide vital ecosystem services, many of which are essential for the survival of other species in the community.

Seed dispersal: Elephants consume a wide variety of fruits, nuts, and plants. As they travel, they excrete the undigested seeds along with their dung. This process helps in dispersing seeds over large distances, contributing to plant regeneration and biodiversity.

Water Hole Creation: Elephants dig for water and create new watering holes, which allow them to survive during the dry season. These water sources benefit a wide range of species, including smaller mammals and birds, especially in arid regions.

Nutrient Cycling: Elephants consume a large quantity of vegetation daily, and their dung is rich in nutrients. When elephants move through the landscape, they deposit these nutrients in various areas, contributing to nutrient cycling and enhancing soil fertility.

Create new paths: Elephants are known as “ecosystem engineers” due to their ability to shape their environment. They create pathways through dense vegetation, which benefits other species by providing easier access to resources. Similarly, elephants pull down and uproot thorny bushes, which further helps in clearing safe pathways for smaller animals. The clearance of some thorny bushes also allows more light to reach the ground, which promotes the growth of new plant species and reduces competition.

Finding natural salt licks: Elephants use their sense of smell to detect areas in the ground that have large quantities of minerals. These salt lick sites are not only used by elephants, but also other herbivores who may need to increase their mineral intake.

What are the challenges in elephant conservation?

Habitat Loss and Fragmentation: Habitat loss is widely considered a major threat to Indian elephants. From expanding human settlements and mining to converting land to plantations and linear infrastructure, many activities can block migratory elephant routes and drive them into smaller subpopulations. When animals are forced into smaller pockets of populations, they risk losing genetic diversity and have a higher chance of dying from disease and natural disasters. When accounting for climate change projections, scientists predict that the elephant population in the country could lose over 40% of its habitat by 2070.

Elephant corridors: Elephant herds are known to migrate across 350-500 sq. km. annually. As elephant habitats have been fragmented, the pathways connecting them—called corridors—have become increasingly important for allowing elephants to access resource. But anthropogenic pressures have also contributed to extreme degradation of large parts of elephant corridors. As per the latest estimate, 101 elephant corridors exist in the country, with many facing the threat of being cut off.

Human-Elephant Conflict: Increasingly fragmented landscapes are driving the elephants more frequently into human-dominated areas. Elephants raid plantations and crop fields in their quest for food or move between forest patches, giving rise to more man-animal conflicts. They lead to the death and injury of human beings and retaliatory killings of elephants. On average, about 500 humans and 100 elephants are killed every year across the country in such confrontations. This is amongst the biggest threats to the survival of elephants in the wild.

Poaching: Poaching remains a threat to elephants. Since only males have tusks, poaching has resulted in a highly skewed male-female ratio in many areas. In some areas, the normal level of 1:12 (male-female) has been distorted to 1:100. This abnormality seriously affects the genetic viability of the populations. Poaching for meat, skin and other products like tail hair also threatens elephant populations, especially in northeast India.

Insufficient funds: Project Elephant’s budgetary allocation has remained around Rs 30-35 crore on average for several years now. The Rs 35 crore allocated in FY 2022-2023 is effectively just Rs 1.09 crore per year per reserve, whose average size is 2,400 sq.km.

Other challenges: There are 33 elephant reserves in India but they don’t promise greater standards of protection of elephant habitats because they are not recognised under any law. As a result, governments easily divert elephant reserves and corridors for various projects, although mining and linear infra projects are especially destructive.

The environment ministry is yet to implement several expert committees’ recommendations. For example, the elephant task force (ETF) submitted its report in 2010 but the government has implemented none of these recommendations. In 2019, the elephant cell under Project Elephant formed a committee to prepare a ‘National Elephant Action Plan’, to frame time-bound strategies and action plans to manage and conserve elephants. The action plan is still not ready.

What are the legal protections given to the Asian elephants?

The Asian Elephant has been given the highest level of protection in India by its inclusion in Schedule 1 of the Wildlife (Protection) Act 1972.

Asian Elephants are also included in Appendix I of the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora (CITES).

In 2019, with the efforts put in by the Indian Government, the Indian elephants have now been included in the Appendix I of the Convention of Migratory Species (CMS).

What are the steps taken by the government for elephant conservation?

Project Elephant was launched by the Central Government in 1992 as a Centrally Sponsored Scheme with following objectives: 1. To protect elephants, their habitat & corridors 2. To address issues of man-animal conflict 3. Welfare of captive elephants. The Ministry of Environment, Forest and Climate Change provides the financial and technical support to major elephant range states in the country through Project Elephant.

Note: Recently, Project Elephant has been merged with Project Tiger. A common allocation will fund both. The administrative setup for the two schemes will continue to exist separately.

Various other Centrally Sponsored schemes being implemented by the Ministry of Environment, Forest & Climate Change (MoEF&CC) contribute to the improvement in the natural habitat of elephants by augmenting water sources, planting of fodder trees, regeneration of bamboo etc.

The Compensatory Afforestation Fund Act 2016 and the Rules made there under also provide for use of the fund for development of wildlife habitats, including for elephants, establishment of animal rescue centres, etc.

To reduce human-elephant conflict and to avoid retaliatory killing of elephants, compensation is being provided to local communities for loss of their property and life caused by wild elephants.

The Government also provides crop insurance to the farmers for their crops being damaged by wild animals under Pradhan Mantri Fasal Bima Yojana.

An advisory on dealing with human-wildlife conflict has been issued by the Ministry in February 2021.

To minimise the adverse impact of existing railway lines on elephants and other wildlife, recently, 110 critical sites over 1,800 km on existing railway lines were identified by MoEF&CC and state forest departments. Mitigation strategies will be undertaken on these sites with the cooperation of railway ministry.

The MoEF&CC‘s Land Use Land Cover analysis of elephant reserves for states will offer a detailed approach towards elephant conservation.

What should be the way forward for elephant conservation?

The Elephant Task Force report laid out an actionable and progressive framework for elephant conservation. Its recommendations are still relevant.

Elephant reserves should be accorded the status of being ‘ecologically sensitive areas’ under the Environmental (Protection) Act 1986.

A statutory body in line with the National Tiger Conservation Authority, named the National Elephant Conservation Authority (NECA) should be formed.

To create a more co-ordinated and science-based mitigation strategy for human-elephant conflict, a permanent Conflict Management Task Force should be formed for the review of existing conflict mitigation strategies and recommend site-specific strategies at the reserve level.

All the elephant corridors should be notified by respective state governments.

Different ‘no-go’ and ‘slow-go’ zones should be created in the elephant reserves for the regulation of developmental activities.

Financial support should be increased considerably for elephant conservation as elephants need large areas to move around and protecting such large landscapes needs money.

Sources: Times of India, The Wire