The State Government has set up a committee to restore the hitherto defunct elephant corridors across the State after encouraging community participation in its ambitious environment conservation programme, ‘Mera pedh mera dhan (My Tree, My Money)’.
The State Forest Department has set up a committee to revive the elephant corridors. This committee headed by the director, Rajaji National Park, has the representatives from state forest department and agencies like the World Wildlife Fund (WWF), the Wildlife Trust of India to name a few, as members in this committee, said Surendra Mehra, Conservator of Forest (CF), western circle of the state forest department, who is also a member in this committee, while talking to The Pioneer.
The committee will see how to restore and facilitate movements on the elephant corridors across the state and make this land a favourable habitat for the giant animal- elephant, added Mehra.
Mention worthy, among others the ancient elephant corridor stretching from Uttarakhand's Dehradun/ Haridwar upto Nepal border via the hill States' Terai landscape was the most important link for elephants movements. But presently the said corridor has become virtually defunct following increasing human interferences along this stretch of late.
More so, the maoist movements in Nepal in the past only made things complicated for elephant movements on this ancient elephant corridor, as the wildlife experts said.
Though some efforts were made to revive the elephant corridors in the recent past, these measures proved insufficient. More so, earlier the Government of India also announced a task force to look into revival of the said corridor a few years ago . But there is no headway in this regard since then.
The fact is that apart from emergence of factories including stone crushers and unauthorised colonies like Bindukhatta along the aforesaid elephant corridor in Haldwani/ lalkuan area, a lot of mining activities presently in this region giving rise to vehicular movements, have only defeated the purpose of wildlife conservation particularly elephants in this region.
On account of increasing commercial activities coupled with human interferences, movements of elephants also remain struck in other districts of Uttarakhand’s Haridwar and Dehradun resulting in intrusion of these wildlife species into human habitations for fodder.
However, the representatives from the Nepal Army and forest department Nepal and Uttarakhand forest department also met in recent past to discuss how to revive the said corridors. Now the State Government’s decision to set up acommittee to restore the elephants corridors has come as a major development.