It is time for the gentle giants of the forests to be counted as the Forest Department in Karnataka embarked on a three-day elephant population estimation exercise on Wednesday covering both protected and unprotected areas.
This is part of the Synchronized Elephant Population estimation conducted once in five years and is being held across the southern States of Karnataka, Kerala and Tamil Nadu which together account for the highest number of elephants in the country.
In protected and unprotected areas
Rajiv Ranjan, PCCF (Wildlife), said that the exercise could not be held in 2022 and hence was being conducted now. ‘’It will cover both protected areas and unprotected areas and the synchronised exercise helps get a robust and more accurate figure as there are no chances of duplication of the count,’’ he said. In addition to the three Southern states with high elephant population, it is being taken up in Andhra Pradesh, Maharasthra and Goa as well.
The first day of the census entailed block count and direct count of elephants and the forest staff will switch to line transects and also take indirect count of elephants through dung. On the last day. May 19, there will be a waterhole count of elephants to help ascertain the male and female population, sub-adults, juveniles and calves, according to Ramesh Kumar, Director, Bandipur Tiger Reserve.
He said Bandipur has been divided into 115 blocks and each block is being covered by three personnel and hence nearly 450 forest department personnel are involved in the task.
Conducted by 300 staff
C. Harshakumar, DCF and Director, Nagarahole Tiger Reserve, said that the nearly 300 staff have been deployed for the elephant estimation exercise and each team will traverse 15 km in a 5 sq. km block to collect the data. The staff were trained for the exercise which is being carried out in all the 91 beats of the tiger reserve simultaneously covering 500 sq. km and there is no involvement of volunteers.
The last such exercise was conducted in 2017 as per which there were 27,312 elephants in the country of which Karnataka had the highest number at 6,049 and the elephant distribution area was 8,976 sq km. Kerala had 3,054 while Tamil Nadu harboured 2,761 elephants.
Bandipur had 1,170 elephants as per the 2017 population estimation while Nagarahole had nearly 900 to 1000 elephants, The elephant density per sq. km was 1.54 in Nagarahole, 1.13 in Bandipur, 1.12 in Bhadra Tiger Reserve, and 0.98 in BRT Tiger Reserve. Elephants were found in 33 forest divisions in Karnataka and the overall density was 0.67 elephants per sq. km for the State. Karnataka had retained its status as the State with the highest elephant population in the country.
Population now
The Karnataka elephant population was pegged at 4,035 in the 2007 estimations and was pegged in a range between 5,648 and 6488 elephants in 2012. This was because the direct count indicated a lower number and the indirect dung count indicated gave the upper estimate.
