The elephant

Prelims and MainsCurrent affairs on this: Elephants and other land mammals

The Asian elephant, Elephas maximus, is a keystone species and an ecosystem engineer: it disperses seeds, enriches soil with dung and opens pathways that other species then use. It is Endangered on the IUCN Red List, in Schedule I of the Wildlife (Protection) Act, 1972, and India's national heritage animal. India holds nearly 60 per cent of the world's wild Asian elephants, in moist and dry forest and grassland. Its main threats are conflict with people, blocked migratory routes and habitat degraded by invasive weeds.

• The Synchronous All India Population Estimation of Elephants, 2021 to 2025, is India's first count built on DNA fingerprinting from dung, so the same animal is never counted twice and the count can be repeated.
• It found 22,446 wild elephants, which replaces the sighting based estimate of 2017 as the baseline.
• The reserve network has grown from 3 reserves and 18,297 sq km in 1992 to 33 reserves and 80,777 sq km.

See also: Project Elephant · Elephant corridors