Forest Department personnel engaged in elephant enumeration exercise at Bandipur on Thursday. | Photo Credit: Special Arrangement
Hundreds of Forest Department personnel fanned out across 10 forest divisions of Karnataka for the synchronised elephant population enumeration of southern States, which got under way on Thursday.
Though parts of Bandipur and other areas received heavy showers, the exercise was not affected, according to Ramesh Kumar, Conservator of Forests, Project Tiger.
The three-day exercise, which will conclude on May 25, is a fallout of the Inter-State Coordination Committee (ICC) charter which was unveiled at a meeting of senior Forest Department personnel and Ministers of Karnataka and Kerala, at Bandipur in March this year.
The objective is to prepare a database of elephant population in the forests bordering Karnataka, Kerala, Tamil Nadu, and Andhra Pradesh to ascertain the population dynamics that will help conceive mitigatory measures to reduce human-elephant conflict and those involving other wild animals.
However, places such as Hassan and Chikkamagaluru — despite being epicentres of human-elephant conflicts — have been left out of the exercise as the forests in these regions are not contiguous to jungles of the neighbouring States.
According to authorities, there have been 22 human deaths caused by elephants between January and May this year in Karnataka while four additional deaths were caused by other wild animals.
During the same period 25 elephants have also died in the State though 23 deaths have been attributed to natural causes and the others to unnatural causes.
Some of the forest divisions of Karnataka where the elephant population enumeration exercise was carried out included Bandipur, Nagarahole, BRT Tiger Reserve, Bannerghatta National Park, Cauvery Wildlife Sanctuary, M.M. Hills Wildlife Sanctuary, Madikeri Wildlife Division, and Madikeri Territorial Division, Virajpet division, apart from Kolar.
The first day of the elephant enumeration exercise was block sampling or direct count exercise which entailed each of the teams to survey regular beats and cover an area of 5 sq km noting down records of elephant sighting and enter the data. “The teams returned by 6 p.m. and had significant sightings though the numbers etc., will be known only after analysis of data and will take some time,” Mr. Ramesh Kumar added.
On Friday, the field staff will conduct line transect exercise and each team will walk a distance of 2 km recording data on either side of the transect line. The water hole count exercise will be taken up on Saturday where elephant enumeration will be taken up from an observation point established at different points from 6 a.m. to 6 p.m. The results of the data will be analysed by scientists of Indian Institute of Science.
In BRT Tiger Reserve, 170 staff have been deployed for the exercise while more than 300 staff are taking part in Nagarahole and about similar numbers in Bandipur.
