Stung by the highest number of deaths, ten in Gudalur forest division, in human-elephant conflict in just one-year, the Forest Department has decided to replicate the successful models of Valparai and Kodagu.
Early warning system of Valparai and proactive participation of plantation workers tried out in Kodagu had mitigated the conflict.
A meeting of the stake holders, involving the plantation labour trade unions, estate managements, revenue, police, inspectorate of factories and labour department, was conducted at Udhagamandalam and Gudalur on Tuesday and Wednesday. D. Boominathan, landscape co-ordinator of WWF, made a presentation on the causative factors and remedial measures both interim and long term.
During the current one year as many as ten lives were lost, mostly plantation labourers in Gudalur division. The division, spreading over 260 small patches i.e., 11,500 hectares, had been witnessing the highest human-animal conflict. The division was sandwiched between Mudumalai in Tamil Nadu and Neelambur in Kerala. Elephants normally migrated from Wayanad and northern side of Mudumalai towards O Valley and Neelambur in Kerala, said I. Anwardeen, Conservator of Forests – Coimbatore Circle.
Huge estates, partitioned and turned into smaller patches leading to fencing, had also resulted in fragmentation of the migratory paths. The analysis of deaths revealed that plantation workers venturing out early in the morning or returning late in the evening proved to be one of the causes, said S.N. Tejaswi, Divisional Forest Officer-Gudalur.
The administration and the labour departments had warned the estate managements to stick to the working hours stipulated in law as any violation would only put their lives at risk. In addition, Sundays should have been used for perambulating the estates and peripheral areas looking out for traces of elephant movement. But in some conflict situations, reasons for death were found to be forcing the workers to turn up on Sundays and not doing the perambulation, the officials said.
Analysis of the deaths this year and conflict mapping of the previous years indicated that Pitherkad, Pandalur, Cherambadi and O Valley were proving to be highly conflict prone. Hence, the Forest Department had decided to expand the early warning system put up at 13 places by the Gudalur Division with the help of WWF. The department would now work in tandem with Nature Conservation Foundation, which had given the most successful early warning systems mitigating the conflict scale in Valparai which falls under the Anamalai Tiger Reserve (ATR) and replicate it here.
In addition, at the ground level, the Gudalur Forest Division will tie-up with local cable channels and will create a Whatsapp group for instant dissemination of information relating to elephant or herd movements. The Department is also planning to replicate the Kodagu model, wherein the Department will train the staff from plantation managements at Mudumalai and impart them with the skills to spot and track elephants by their smell, dung and traces of trampled grass.
This could enable them to take up periodical perambulation of the Estate and their peripheral areas to warn the estate staff and turn the estate managements into a proactive mode.
Early warning system is likely
to prevent
man-animal
conflict
