Elephants and other land mammals

Prelims and Mains

• The Asian elephant Elephas maximus is a keystone species, dispersing seeds and opening pathways that other species then use.
• It is Endangered on the Red List of the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN).
• It is a Schedule I species under the Wild Life (Protection) Act, 1972.
• It lives in moist and dry forest and grassland, and India holds nearly 60 per cent of the world's wild Asian elephants.
• The wild population was put at 22,446 by the Synchronous All India Population Estimation of Elephants (SAIEE), run from 2021 to 2025.
• Its main threats are human elephant conflict, blocked migratory routes and habitat degraded by invasive weeds.
• Project Elephant, launched in 1992, is the conservation programme, with 33 Elephant Reserves across 14 States.

Prelims and Mains

An elephant corridor is the part of the range that no reserve boundary covers, and it is where the animal and the farmer meet. The Supreme Court has now ordered the whole national map of them resurveyed.

• The 2023 assessment validated 150 corridors, and that is the map now being redrawn.
• Nineteen of them cross State lines and six reach into Nepal, which is why a single State cannot settle a route on its own.
• The Court gave eight weeks for a report on removing obstructions.
• It held that no State may block a traditional route over crop damage.
• It asked the Centre to check reports of fireballs, torches and spikes, banned in 2018, still driving elephants away.

Prelims and Mains

Project Elephant marked World Elephant Day with two announcements, and neither was about how many elephants there are. Both were about conflict, which is where elephants and people now meet most often.

• It released a Regional Action Plan on human elephant conflict for the southern States.
• It also set out 30 Giant Steps for elephant conservation.