The district wildlife division here is preparing for an elephant census exercise scheduled to be held between May 8 and 12.
The exercise would be held in all pachyderm habitat divisions, simultaneously across the State. For the purpose, training camps are being organised to train the manpower to be deployed on the job.
The census for jumbos is generally carried out by direct sighting but for the first time, indirect sighting method too would be adopted along with the earlier method.
As per the indirect method, the elephant number would be determined by the sighting of dung and decay.
This method would apply in 14 identified jumbo infested forest divisions out of total 40 elephant habitat divisions of the State.
For the census, while a training camp was organised in Bhubaneswar in the second week of February, an acclaimed elephant expert Dr RS Kumar gave the tips to the officials attending it.
“Training in different levels is being organised for the census after the State level programme. Teams have been formed which would be deployed for the exercise. Each team would be having at least three members. They would be sitting on raised platforms (manchas) as well as do foot patrolling along with the earmarked transect lines to detect the presence of elephants. As per last census, there were 89 pachyderms in the Kuldiha and Nilgiri divisions.
Kuldiha is connected with the Hathgarh as well as Simlipal biosphere,” said Baleswar DFO HB Udgata.
There are about 2,000 elephants in the State. In the last census, Mayurbhanj circle which includes Karanjia, Rairangpur, Baripada, Simlipal tiger reserve (STR), Kuldiha, Nilgiri of Baleswar and Hathgarh of Keonjhar, had about 517 pachyderms.
While in Simlipal reserve forest, there were 439 elephants in the core area, the number was 347 as per the last count. In Hathgarh, there were 51 elephants.