The three-day elephant population enumeration which was held in Karnataka forests bordering the southern States concluded with waterhole count, on Saturday.
It entailed field personnel taking positions near waterholes and noting the elephant population structure. The elephants are to be classified as calf, juvenile, sub-adult and adult based on their shoulder height.
The estimation was carried out in 10 forest divisions of Karnataka that bordered the forests of Tamil Nadu, Kerala and Andhra Pradesh which also conducted similar exercise.
The first day of the exercise was block sampling and direct count followed by a line transect survey on Friday. The synchronised elephant population enumeration exercise is a fallout of the Interstate Coordination Committee (ICC) meeting held at Bandipur in March. The exercise is expected to provide inputs and data for assessing the population dynamics of elephants to conceive mitigatory measures to minimise human-elephant conflicts in the surveyed regions.
As the exercise was restricted to forest divisions sharing boundaries with neighbouring States, some districts like Hassan, Chikkamagalur, etc., where the conflict is high, were not part of the exercise.
More than 1600 personnel across different forest divisions took part in the exercise the results of which will be available after analysis by scientists.
