The Union Forest and Environment Ministry has given its approval to the Terai Elephant Reserve (TER), which will be developed over a 3,049 square kilometre area, including the Dudhwa Tiger Reserve and the Pilibhit Tiger Reserve located In Lakhimpur and Pilibhit districts.
According to the UP Forest department, the nod for TER was given on Friday and the notification is likely to be issued by the state government soon.
The UP Forest department had prepared the proposal in April and forwarded it to the Centre on October 11. With the Terai Elephant Reserve coming into existence, the Dudhwa Tiger Reserve would be the lone national park in Uttar Pradesh that would protect and conserve four iconic wild species — tiger, one-horned rhinoceros, the Asian elephant and swamp deer.
Besides the Dudhwa and Pilibhit tiger reserves, the elephant reserve would comprise forest areas of the Kishanpur Wildlife Sanctuary, the Katarniaghat Wildlife Sanctuary, the Dudhwa buffer zone and parts of the south Kheri forest division.
The establishment of the Terai Elephant Reserve will be a milestone in terms of wildlife conservation, particularly of the Asian elephants, as it is located on the India-Nepal border, where trans-border movement of elephants is a routine.
The Centre would provide all financial and technical assistance under the Project Elephant, which would help handle human-elephant conflicts. The establishment of the elephant reserve in Dudhwa would help adopt an elephant-centric approach towards their conservation.
Also, the financial and technical aid received under the Project Elephant would be utilised in managing Dudhwa’s camp elephants and incidents of man-elephant conflicts, which are presently state-dependent, would be handled more effectively.
The Dudhwa Tiger Reserve has attracted wild elephants for decades through various domestic and trans-border corridors, including Basanta-Dudhwa, Laljhadi (Nepal)-Sathiyana and the Shuklaphanta (Nepal)-Dhaka-Pilibhit-Dudhwa buffer zone corridors. The Terai Elephant Reserve under the Project Elephant would help revive or restore these corridors, which have been disturbed.