Principal Chief Conservator of Forests and Chief Wildlife Warden S. Yuvaraj on Monday directed the 11-member expert committee which he formed to study elephant population in Tamil Nadu from 2006 to submit an interim report before the final report to be submitted by the end of this year.
Mr. Yuvaraj held a meeting with I. Anwardeen, Additional Principal Chief Conservator of Forests, Coimbatore Circle; D. Venkatesh, District Forest Officer, Coimbatore Forest Division; A. Sukumar, Forest Veterinary Officer; and D. Boominathan of World Wide Fund (WWF), Coimbatore.
Committee’s chairperson Shekar Kumar Niraj, Additional Principal Chief Conservator of Forest (Wildlife); member secretary S. Anand, District Forests Officer, Madurai; Sivaganesan from Chennai; C. Arivazhagan, managing trustee of the Indo American Wildlife Society in Chennai; veterinarians M. Kalaivanan, from Theni and A. Predeep from Chennai attended the meeting through video conferencing.
After reviewing the committee’s activities so far, Mr. Yuvaraj made the members of the committee fix a timeline to come up with the interim report at the earliest and the final report on or before December 31, 2020.
The committee was formed to study elephant population and their movement in Tamil Nadu from January 1, 2006 to June 30, 2020, especially after Coimbatore Forest Division witnessed several elephant deaths. While 15 elephants died in the forest division at the time of the formation of the committee on July 4, the death toll reached 17 on August 10.
