Asian elephants
Hyderabad, October 17, 2012: The Project Elephant in collaboration with the International Fund for Animal Welfare – Wildlife Trust of India (IFAW-WTI) today organised an event to showcase the significance of wildlife corridors to halt biodiversity loss.
Forests and wildlife face immense threats due to unregulated developmental activities and encroachment. With increasing human population, and corresponding increase in pressures on forests, populations of wild animals may get increasingly isolated. Not only will this compromise the viability of the population over a long-term, but will also aggravate conflicts with people in the vicinity of their habitat.
Large animals, including keystone species like elephants and tigers, that have greater need for space and resources will be the hardest hit.
“Fragmented habitats and insular populations are the biggest challenges for conservation of animals like elephants,” said PJ Dilip Kumar, Director General of Forests and Special Secretary, Ministry of Environment and Forests, Govt. of India. “Corridors need to be secured through strengthening communication with communities and other interest groups.”
The panelists at the side event.
Discussing corridors as a vital lifeline to conservation and various ways to secure them, the side-event at the CBD-CoP 11 was chaired by Dr Kumar.
“People need space and animals need space. When options are available, we would advocate securing them entirely. However, in a number of cases today, we could consider ourselves fortunate enough, if there are even narrow passages linking the different habitats,” said Dr Sandeep Kumar Tiwari, Deputy Director, WTI.
The session included talks by experts – AM Singh, Inspector General of Forests – Project Elephant, Government of India, Aban Marker Kabraji, Regional Director, Asia – IUCN, Dr Robert Guildemonde, University of Pretoria, South Africa, Peter Pueschel, Programme Director – IFAW, and Vivek Menon, Executive Director, WTI.
IFAW-WTI has been working to secure wildlife corridors to ensure that the leftover contiguity is not lost forever. Using various approaches including private purchase of land to facilitate voluntary relocation of settlements within, assisting governments facilitate similar move, and even an innovative method of facilitating protection of forests by communities through declaration of village reserve forests.
“Elephants are keystone species; their natural well-being is a clear indicator of the state of an ecosystem and all of biodiversity. Wildlife corridors allow wild animals to roam freely between different habitats as they used since ancient times and can help mitigate human-elephant conflicts,” said Pueschel. “This will also help reach at least three of the 20 Aichi targets within the CBD strategy to halt the loss of biodiversity.”
