All India counting exercise in May will assess the health of the iconic species
Volunteers and wildlife activists will fan out across the jungles of Karnataka to count and account for the actual number of wild elephants in the State in May.
The authorities have finalised the date for the All-India Synchronised Asian Elephant Population Estimation, which will be held from May 16 to 19, 2017, and will be conducted simultaneously in Karnataka and other southern States.
The exercise entails estimating the elephant numbers through various methods — including direct sample block counts and indirect or line transect dung count methods — and the data will be used to arrive at a reliable estimate of the actual population range of the elephants in the wild.
Population structure
The protocols for population estimations have been designed and approved by the Project Elephant Directorate, Ministry of Environment and Forests, Government of India. It will also help assess the population structure that includes age and sex ratio based on direct sightings.
Dileep Kumar Das, director, Project Elephant, told The Hindu that all national parks and wildlife sanctuaries, besides forest divisions where elephants are found, will be covered during the census.
Sources pointed out that there are 32 forest divisions in the State, with elephant population or sightings, which will be covered in the census.
However, the bulk of State elephants are in the notified Mysore Elephant Reserve (MER), which is made up of the entire stretch of forests from Bhadra in Chikkamagaluru to Nagarahole-Bandipur BRT Wildlife Sanctuary belt, besides Bannerghatta, and is spread over nearly 11,000 sq km.
The All-India Synchronised Asian Elephant Population Estimation is held once in five years and the last such exercise held in 2012 pegged the elephant numbers in the State at 6,072, with the volunteers sighting and counting more than 600 elephants each in Bandipur and Nagarahole alone.
As per the 2012 results, Bandipur had the highest number of elephants estimated at 1,697, followed by Nagarahole at 1,320, and 480 elephants in BRT Wildlife Sanctuary. The other forest divisions with significant elephant counts include the Cauvery Wildlife Sanctuary (255), Bhadra (188), Kollegal (278), Madikeri Territorial Division (273), Madikeri Wildlife Division (192), Ramanagaram (169), Virajpet (65), Hassan (75), Hunsur (70), Bannerghatta (78), Mysore wildlife (51), Anshi-Dandeli (47), among others.
The MER, which accounts for 65% of the elephant area, harbours 98% of the wild elephants in the State, as per the 2012 census exercise. In view of the escalating conflict situations in recent years, the exercise will also help assess if the elephant population is on the rise or at the same levels.