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We are appealing for your immediate
help to protect South India's last significant herds of Wild
Elephants! Please take a few moments to familiarize yourselves
with the predicament of these magnificent animals!
Recent estimates of the number of Asian elephants (Elephus
maximus) remaining in the wild range from 35,000 at the low
end to 50,000 at the upper end. Asian elephants once ranged throughout
most of Asia, but their habitat has been reduced to isolated
fragments, often with boundaries that restrict traditional migrations
and gene flow.
This expanding human settlement/wildland
interface has lead to increased pressure on populations due to
human-elephant conflicts ranging from poaching to crop-raiding
and roadkills. The distribution of Asian elephant populations
in India is well known but population estimates, ranging from
26,000 to 31,000 are up to 14 years out of date and many are
based on less than rigorous data collection. Also, effective
population sizes are lower due to selective poaching of males
for ivory.
Elephant populations in most
ranges are thought to be declining due to a combination of factors,
the main ones being habitat loss due to expanding human settlement,
increasing resource demands, and habitat fragmentation. Habitat
fragmentation leads to the isolation of populations, and for
wide-ranging animals, it may result in several isolated populations
that are too small to be viable. Furthermore, inbreeding depression
can exacerbate loss of genetic viability due to small population
size, eventually leading to population extinction.
For these reasons it is imperative that immediate efforts be
focused towards protecting known key populations and creating
corridors that can facilitate animal migration and gene flow.
Long-term conservation of elephants
must include conservation of large contiguous wildlands. Elephants
are a far-ranging species with large nutritional requirements,
which utilize a variety of habitats including forests, shrublands/savannas,
and grasslands.
In South India, the continuous
elephant range extending from the Brahmagiri Hills, south through
the Nilgiri Hills, and east through the Eastern Ghats is one
of 14 out of Asia's 59 known elephant ranges containing wildland
area large enough to support substantial elephant populations.
This 12,000 sq. km area, spanning
three states (Karnataka, Tamil Nadu, and Kerala) is thought to
house 6,300 elephants, the largest remaining population of Asian
elephants in the world. The contiguity of the region's forest
habitat is not maintained by the patchwork of protected areas,
and the range has become highly fragmented.
The Nagarhole, Bandipur, Wynaad,
and Mudumalai protected areas and the adjacent Nilgiri North
Division have been identified as one of the four most important
zones within this range for long-term conservation of elephants,
due to its relatively intact habitat and large elephant population.
These four parks and their adjoining Reserve Forests cover over
3300 sq. km of forest and support a population of 1800-2300 elephants.
The Nilgiri Biosphere Reserve
encloses this entire region. However the Sigur Plateau, on the
east side of the Mudumalai Wildlife Sanctuary in Tamil Nadu state,
which serves as the link between the Eastern and Western Ghats
for migrating elephants, remains largely unprotected as a buffer
zone. In addition to elephants, tigers, panthers, wild dogs,
gaur, hyenas, and several other large mammals also live in the
forests of the Sigur plateau. The conservation of this critical
elephant habitat would not only serve to protect one of the largest
Asian elephant populations, but would also benefit the entire
ecosystem, including other rare species.
There are seven settlements
on the Sigur plateau, and six identified corridors used by elephants
for movement and habitat that wind between their widening footprints,
Reserved Forests (RFs), and the steep slopes of the Nilgiri hills
to the south and those of the Moyar Gorge to the north.
Most of these settlements were
historically established along rivers and are now enclosed within
Revenue Land boundaries.
As their size has increased
along with population growth (mainly due to hydroelectric construction
projects), development, agriculture and tourism, village lands
have expanded to form a near-continuous boundary between the
Sigur plateau's RFs, leaving only narrow corridors. Animal movement
and access to surface water is now largely prevented by human-made
barriers such as electric fencing and agricultural activities.
The need for protection of
these corridors was identified decades ago and has since been
replicated in numerous studies. Consequently, several attempts
have been made to have Sigur's RFs included in the sanctuary.
However, the Tamil Nadu Forest
Department has yet to move on such recommendations. Under the
current intense level of development, these corridors could be
lost in the very near future. Consequently, the carrying capacity
of the protected area network will be diminished and local elephant
populations, without access to water, are likely to disappear.
All of the elephant corridors
are suffering from varying levels of degradation due to their
proximity to settled areas. Corridor width between settlements
varies from only 400-1000m. These corridors can be secured by
the protection and restoration of forested areas within Revenue
Lands that are in proximity to the corridors, which amount to
about 400 ha or 10 sq. kms.
One of the major issues is
extensive grazing in protected areas, including parks, by thousands
of cattle kept by villagers to produce truckloads of dung, much
of which is sold to organic coffee plantations in Kerala for
use as fertilizer.
An integral facet of elephant
conservation is to solve the dilemma of alternative livelihood
requirements for villagers and tribals living in proximity to
wildlife habitat. Unregulated, unplanned wildlife tourism in
Sigur has also become a large part of the problem.
The most seemingly insurmountable
obstacle to the protection of the elephants is, quite tragically,
rampant bureaucratic inertia. South India's final wildlife refugia
are screaming out for a single lead agency, with the power to
command and coordinate the myriad interjurisdictional bureacracies
that are complicating this simple conservation project.
Additional major threats include:
o Pressure from local reliance
on cattle dung as a source of income,
o Pressure from local reliance
on fuelwood gathered from the forests,
o Ivory poaching continues
with virtual impunity throughout the area,
o A massive increase of unregulated
"eco-tourism" safari development,
o Corruption and mismanagement
by government officials,
o Pressure to construct 10
kms. of highway through the Sigur Forest, which will immediately
result in a large traffic flow through the forest,
o Accumulated scientific research
data is jealously guarded by a select few elephant scientists
who compete for lucrative project funding.
We are appealing to you to
PLEASE immediately write to the Government of India, to DEMAND
that they get serious about protecting South India's wild elephants!
Priorities are in the following
order:
1) ESTABLISH A SINGLE LEAD
AGENCY WITH SUFFICIENT POWER AND RESPONSIBILITY TO COMMAND AND
COORDINATE THE CONSERVATION EFFORT
2) IMMEDIATELY SECURE THE KNOWN ELEPHANT CORRIDORS IN THE AREA
AROUND MASINAGUDI, TAMIL NADU
3) RAISE THE STANDARD OF PROTECTION
IN ALL RESERVED FORESTS THAT CONTAIN VIABLE ELEPHANT HABITAT
4) A PERMANENT MORATORIUM ON
ANY FURTHER ROAD DEVELOPMENT IN THE SIGUR RESERVED FOREST
5) IMMEDIATE INSTIGATION OF
INITIATIVES FOR CATTLE-TENDERS AND TRIBALS TO ENCOURAGE WILDLIFE-CONGRUOUS
LIVELIHOOD ACTIVITIES
India's wild elephants are
in serious trouble and they need your help!
Here is how you can help!
Please click on this following
link to the "Ecological Internet," read the backgrounder
and endorse the sign-on letter. The letter will then be automatically
sent out to hundreds of government officials, media, elephant
scientists, ENGO's and business which have 'interests' in these
magnificent wild animals.
CounterPunch
Speakers Bureau Sick of sit-on-the-Fence speakers, tongue-tied and timid?
CounterPunch Editors Alexander Cockburn and Jeffrey St Clair
are available to speak forcefully on ALL the burning issues,
as are other CounterPunchers seasoned in stump oratory. Call
CounterPunch Speakers Bureau, 1-800-840-3683. Or email beckyg@counterpunch.org.
