Elephant Conservation

Elephant Conservation

Subject – Environment

Context – Preventing Forest loss on private land can aid elephant conservation: Paper

Concept –

• Elephants prefer areas close to forests, with high vegetation cover and low human population densities.
• Preserving forest cover on private land can aid elephants to travel between habitats, in turn, helping to conserve their increasingly isolated populations.
• Connectivity is critical for the Asian elephant, India’s Natural Heritage Animal. They range widely, sometimes over the space of hundreds of kilometres, to meet their immense food and water requirements.
• Identification of corridors for the Asian elephant can potentially aid the movement of other animals, such as tigers or hog deer, as well.

About Elephants

1. Asian Elephants:
   • There are three subspecies of Asian elephant which are the Indian, Sumatran and Sri Lankan.
   • The Indian subspecies has the widest range and accounts for the majority of the remaining elephants on the continent.
   • Global Population: Estimated 20,000 to 40,000.
   • IUCN Red List: Endangered.
   • Wildlife (Protection) Act, 1972: Schedule I.
   • CITES: Appendix I

2. African Elephants:
   • There are two subspecies of African elephants, the Savanna (or bush) elephant and the Forest elephant.
   • Global Population: Around 4,00,000.
   • IUCN Red List Status:
     • African Savanna Elephant: Endangered.
     • African Forest Elephant: Critically Endangered
   • CITES: Appendix II