Movements of elephants along the old elephant corridor stretching from Uttarakhand’s Dehradun to Boom-Brahamdev in Nepal via the hill State’s Terai landscape that had become virtually defunct after Maoist insurgency in Nepal and increasing human interference elsewhere along this corridor, have proved encouraging for the wildlife conservators.
Though some attempts were made to revive the aforesaid corridor in the recent past these, however, proved insufficient. Among some of the measures taken in recent years for revival of the said corridor are the Government of India’s decision to slightly shift the ITBP base camp at lalkuan/ Bindukhatta area in Haldwani some meters away from the same old Gola elephant corridor that stretches from Sharda range, Tankpuar/Boom Brahamdev to Dehradun and restriction on vehicular movements on the Gola river bank stretch.
More so, the Government of India once also announced a task force to look into possibility of reviving the said corridor. But there is no headway on the matter since then. The fact is that apart from many vital installations, including the depot of Indian Oil and stone crushers and unauthorised colonies like Bindukhatta coming up along the said elephant corridor, a lot of mining activities, of late, have defeated the purpose of wildlife conservation in this region.
However, recent appearance of the elephants on the said corridor from Nepal side to India has now made the wildlife activists and the forest departments of the Uttarakhand and Nepal to re-strategise things. Perhaps, as the wildlife experts here maintained, removal of the a Maoist camp from along the Boom Brahamdev corridor in Nepal has facilitated movements of the pachyderms from across Nepal to this corridor involving Uttarakhand and Nepal.
A recent meet between the Nepal Army and forest departments of Nepal and Uttarakhand can also be seen as part of the respective stakeholders’ wildlife conservation plan after these recent developments on wildlife front. Apart from deciding to jointly deal with wildlife trafficking and poaching along the long and porous India-Nepal border, the agencies concerned also agreed to focus on reviving the elephant corridor between Dehradun and Boom-Brahamdev in Nepal and the Shukla-phatak elephant corridor from the Terai-east forest division’s Khatima region in Udham Singh Nagar to the Nepal border.
The Nepal Army and the forest department of Nepal and Uttarakhand forest department have agreed to jointly work on revival of the Boom-Brahamdev and Shuklaphata elephant corridors along the India-Nepal border, curbing wildlife poaching/smuggling through joint patrolling, said C S Sanwal, Divisional Forest Officer of the Haldwnai forest division.
The Haldwani forest division is one of key players in carrying out the wildlife conservation measures jointly with Nepal. To give concrete shape to these plans, the agencies concerned from both sides have also reached an agreement to have bilateral meeting regularly once in three months, he added.