World Elephant Day 2023: Merger of its Project with that of the tiger seems to be a matter of administrative convenience

I am not sure why Project Tiger and Project Elephant were merged. But it seems to be a matter of administrative convenience.

If you look in the past at the financial allocation for Project Tiger and Project Elephant over the years, Project Elephant has always played second fiddle or has received step-motherly treatment in terms of funding. 

Project Tiger has always had a much higher level of funding compared to Project Elephant. Therefore, the scope of Project Elephant in terms of contributing to management has been actually quite minimal.

Especially in recent decades, it was largely about setting the policy with very little funding provided to the states.

Karnataka, for instance, has put in significantly higher amount of money into Project Elephant compared to what it gets from the Centre.

So the states’ contribution is, by order of magnitude, higher than what they get from the Centre.

Having said that, in terms of the devolution of funds between Project Tiger and Project Elephant under the new scheme, if the latter is able to get a greater amount of funding, it would actually be a positive.

Second, Project Tiger and Project Elephant areas overlap significantly in parts of the country. 

For instance, in southern India, there are several tiger reserves which also have substantial elephant populations. In the north, you have Rajaji and Corbett tiger reserves and both are part of the elephant and tiger projects. 

There would still be significant populations of elephants outside the Project Tiger areas. But to the extent that Project Tiger and Project Elephant have significant overlaps in many regions, it could potentially have greater synergy. 

But that synergy will be realised only if elephant-oriented, and not just tiger-oriented management, gets sufficient funding.

The focus of each of these two is somewhat different. But if elephant-oriented management gets a greater share of the funding than what it has so far, it potentially could be a positive.

I also feel that the focus should be brought back to the management of elephants in the designated project.

For instance, the focus of Project Elephant should be on conserving viable populations of elephants and viable landscapes for the long-term. Elephant corridors should be clearly defined according to actual need without scope for ambiguity.

Second, a huge amount of dispersal and range expansion of the elephant has happened in the last 20-30 years and that is causing enormous challenges in terms of human-elephant conflict.

This is not sustainable because it takes away a disproportionate amount of the funding available for elephant management to just compensation claims. The number of people killed by wild elephants has quadrupled in the last 40 years. It will require a major management effort to bring the number of human casualties down to “acceptable” levels. 

The area of the elephant range that is occupied has also increased a lot in recent decades (though obviously not if you consider the distribution several centuries ago) and, therefore, the damage to agricultural crops has increased enormously.

So the second focus should really be to mitigate conflict, to keep conflicts within tolerable levels through a slew of different measures depending on the region.

I would also advocate something else. The Karnataka Elephant Task Force, which I was a part of, suggested a three-zone approach in its report on management of elephants and minimising human-elephant conflict to the High Court of Karnataka in 2012. 

The first would be an elephant conservation zone, which in the state of Karnataka would hold about 90 per cent of elephants. It would include all protected areas and large stretches of intact forests and other natural habitats.

The second zone would be an elephant-human co-existence zone. There will be interface between people and elephants within the landscape or within the elephant reserves to a certain extent.

These are coexistence zones, because today, ‘coexistence’ is a very fashionable term but the coexistence system is possible only within an elephant reserve or a landscape and not anywhere in the country. 

The third type of zone is elephant exclusion zone. In areas which are predominantly human-dominated where there is enormous conflict, you cannot sustain elephants in the long term without the pain being felt by farmers and local communities. So, we advocated keeping those areas free of elephants.

That is the kind of thinking that we should bring into our elephant management because it has been endorsed by the Karnataka High Court and in its judgement in 2012.

More recently, the Odisha High Court has also endorsed this approach in its interim orders in an ongoing case involving elephant conservation. Such a scheme would be the most pragmatic for all states and regions in the country to adopt in order to achieve the long term conservation of the species in sustainable landscapes with tolerable levels of human-elephant conflicts. The management of elephants should progress towards achieving clearly outlined long term aims and goals.

Raman Sukumar is National Science Chair, Centre for Ecological Sciences, Indian Institute of Science. He spoke to Rajat Ghai

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