Radio Collaring of elephants fails to fetch desired results
   Date :21-Mar-2020

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By Roshan Chachane :
 
RAIPUR,
 
Radio Collaring of elephants to mitigate the human-elephant conflicts has failed to yield the desired results as four of the five collars have fell off from the elephants, which have now become untraceable. Forest Department had set the target of 12 elephants for radio collaring, but only managed five, out of which now only one is functional. Chhattisgarh has suffered 65 human deaths, 9 elephant deaths and 29 humans sustaining injuries in the sanguinary battle between humans-elephants for land and resources so far and there seems to be no end to this conflict in sight with the current approach, which seems to be falling way short of the needs.
 
In October 2018, Forest Department of Chhattisgarh in association with a Government establishment ‘Wildlife Institute of India’ (WII) and NGO Wildlife SOS had launched the project to put radio collars to monitor the elephants and to consequently mitigate the Human-Elephant conflicts in the forests of Chhattisgarh. They were supposed to put 12 collars, but they could only do five and out of them only one is remaining. However, the fund released for the project is about Rs 1 crore. The radio collars give accurate location of the elephant herds as they approached populated areas, giving a head-start to forest staffers prepare to tackle the impending trouble. The most recent case of collar fall is reported from Surguja. Collar of a male elephant fell off on March 1.
 
As the summer is approaching, probability of the conflicts between humans and elephants is only going to increase further. Chhattisgarh Forest Department is so ill-prepared that there is still no local expert of elephants available. However, the Department does have more than 10 vets to perform darting, capturing and collaring of elephants. There are many works needed to be done for elephant conservation such as, habitat mapping, elephant ecology and behaviour study, capacity building of the staffs, awareness, corridor identification and notification, identifying anthropogenic pressure, preliminary study to be done in proposed Lemru ER, season wise population estimation. Enough Funds available in state, Central Project Elephant & CAMPA can be utilised. Like tiger conservation plan (TCP), Elephant conservation plan can be prepared to conserve and manage the Elephant reserves.