An
Appeal For South India's
Wild Elephants!
By Ingmar Lee &
Krista Roessingh
17 October, 2006
Countercurrents.org
We
are appealing for your immediate help to protect South India's last
significant herds of Wild Elephants! Please take a few moments to familiarize
yourselves with the predicament of these magnificent animals!
Recent estimates of the number
of Asian elephants (Elephus maximus) remaining in the wild range from
35,000 at the low end to 50,000 at the upper end. Asian elephants once
ranged throughout most of Asia, but their habitat has been reduced to
isolated fragments, often with boundaries that restrict traditional
migrations and gene flow. This expanding human settlement/wildland interface
has lead to increased pressure on populations due to human-elephant
conflicts ranging from poaching to crop-raiding and roadkills. The distribution
of Asian elephant populations in India is well known but population
estimates, ranging from 26,000 to 31,000 are up to 14 years out of date
and many are based on less than rigorous data collection. Also, effective
population sizes are lower due to selective poaching of males for ivory.
Elephant populations in most ranges are thought to be declining due
to a combination of factors, the main ones being habitat loss due to
expanding human settlement, increasing resource demands, and habitat
fragmentation. Habitat fragmentation leads to the isolation of populations,
and for wide-ranging animals, it may result in several isolated populations
that are too small to be viable. Furthermore, inbreeding depression
can exacerbate loss of genetic viability due to small population size,
eventually leading to population extinction. For these reasons it is
imperative that immediate efforts be focused towards protecting known
key populations and creating corridors that can facilitate animal migration
and gene flow.
Long-term conservation of
elephants must include conservation of large contiguous wildlands. Elephants
are a far-ranging species with large nutritional requirements, which
utilize a variety of habitats including forests, shrublands/savannas,
and grasslands. In South India, the continuous elephant range extending
from the Brahmagiri Hills, south through the Nilgiri Hills, and east
through the Eastern Ghats is one of 14 out of Asia's 59 known elephant
ranges containing wildland area large enough to support substantial
elephant populations. This 12,000 sq. km area, spanning three states
(Karnataka, Tamil Nadu, and Kerala) is thought to house 6,300 elephants,
the largest remaining population of Asian elephants in the world. The
contiguity of the region's forest habitat is not maintained by the patchwork
of protected areas, and the range has become highly fragmented.
The Nagarhole, Bandipur,
Wynaad, and Mudumalai protected areas and the adjacent Nilgiri North
Division have been identified as one of the four most important zones
within this range for long-term conservation of elephants, due to its
relatively intact habitat and large elephant population. These four
parks and their adjoining Reserve Forests cover over 3300 sq. km of
forest and support a population of 1800-2300 elephants. The Nilgiri
Biosphere Reserve encloses this entire region. However the Sigur Plateau,
on the east side of the Mudumalai Wildlife Sanctuary in Tamil Nadu state,
which serves as the link between the Eastern and Western Ghats for migrating
elephants, remains largely unprotected as a buffer zone. In addition
to elephants, tigers, panthers, wild dogs, gaur, hyenas, and several
other large mammals also live in the forests of the Sigur plateau. The
conservation of this critical elephant habitat would not only serve
to protect one of the largest Asian elephant populations, but would
also benefit the entire ecosystem, including other rare species.
There are seven settlements
on the Sigur plateau, and six identified corridors used by elephants
for movement and habitat that wind between their widening footprints,
Reserved Forests (RFs), and the steep slopes of the Nilgiri hills to
the south and those of the Moyar Gorge to the north. Most of these settlements
were historically established along rivers and are now enclosed within
Revenue Land boundaries. As their size has increased along with population
growth (mainly due to hydroelectric construction projects), development,
agriculture and tourism, village lands have expanded to form a near-continuous
boundary between the Sigur plateau's RFs, leaving only narrow corridors.
Animal movement and access to surface water is now largely prevented
by human-made barriers such as electric fencing and agricultural activities.
The need for protection of
these corridors was identified decades ago and has since been replicated
in numerous studies. Consequently, several attempts have been made to
have Sigur's RFs included in the sanctuary. However, the Tamil Nadu
Forest Department has yet to move on such recommendations. Under the
current intense level of development, these corridors could be lost
in the very near future. Consequently, the carrying capacity of the
protected area network will be diminished and local elephant populations,
without access to water, are likely to disappear.
All of the elephant corridors
are suffering from varying levels of degradation due to their proximity
to settled areas. Corridor width between settlements varies from only
400-1000m. These corridors can be secured by the protection and restoration
of forested areas within Revenue Lands that are in proximity to the
corridors, which amount to about 400 ha or 10 sq. kms. One of the major
issues is extensive grazing in protected areas, including parks, by
thousands of cattle kept by villagers to produce truckloads of dung,
much of which is sold to organic coffee plantations in Kerala for use
as fertilizer. An integral facet of elephant conservation is to solve
the dilemma of alternative livelihood requirements for villagers and
tribals living in proximity to wildlife habitat. Unregulated, unplanned
wildlife tourism in Sigur has also become a large part of the problem.
The most seemingly insurmountable
obstacle to the protection of the elephants is, quite tragically, rampant
bureaucratic inertia. South India's final wildlife refugia are screaming
out for a single lead agency, with the power to command and coordinate
the myriad interjurisdictional bureacracies that are complicating this
simple conservation project. Additional major threats include:
• Pressure from local
reliance on cattle dung as a source of income,
• Pressure from local
reliance on fuelwood gathered from the forests,
• Ivory poaching continues
with virtual impunity throughout the area,
• A massive increase
of unregulated "eco-tourism" safari development,
• Corruption and mismanagement
by government officials,
• Pressure to construct
10 kms. of highway through the Sigur Forest, which will immediately
result in a large traffic flow through the forest,
• Accumulated scientific
research data is jealously guarded by a select few elephant scientists
who compete for lucrative project funding.
We are appealing to you to
PLEASE immediately write to the Government of India, to DEMAND that
they get serious about protecting South India's wild elephants!
Priorities are in the following
order:
1) ESTABLISH A SINGLE LEAD
AGENCY WITH SUFFICIENT POWER AND RESPONSIBILITY TO COMMAND AND COORDINATE
THE CONSERVATION EFFORT
2) IMMEDIATELY SECURE THE
KNOWN ELEPHANT CORRIDORS IN THE AREA AROUND MASINAGUDI, TAMIL NADU
3) RAISE THE STANDARD OF PROTECTION IN ALL RESERVED FORESTS THAT CONTAIN
VIABLE ELEPHANT HABITAT
4) A PERMANENT MORATORIUM ON ANY FURTHER ROAD DEVELOPMENT IN THE SIGUR
RESERVED FOREST
5) IMMEDIATE INSTIGATION OF INITIATIVES FOR CATTLE-TENDERS AND TRIBALS
TO ENCOURAGE WILDLIFE-CONGRUOUS LIVELIHOOD ACTIVITIES
India's wild elephants are in serious trouble and they need your help!
Here is how you can help!
Please click on this following
link to the "Ecological Internet," read the backgrounder and
endorse the sign-on letter. The letter will then be automatically sent
out to hundreds of government officials, media, elephant scientists,
ENGO's and business which have 'interests' in these magnificent wild
animals.
Let them know that the world
is watching!
http://www.ecoearth.info/alerts/send.asp?id=india
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