India’s elephant corridors

India’s elephant corridors

Subject – Environment

Context – As instances of human-elephant conflict rise, the Ministry of Environment, Forests and Climate Change has embarked on a massive project to identify and secure elephant corridors in the country.

Concept –

What are Elephant Corridors?

• Elephant corridors are narrow strips of land that connect two large habitats of elephants. Elephant corridors are crucial to reduce animal fatalities due to accidents and other reasons. So fragmentation of forests makes it all the more important to preserve migratory corridors.

Why protect elephant corridors?

• The movement of elephants is essential to ensure that their populations are genetically viable. It also helps to regenerate forests on which other species, including tigers, depend.
• Nearly 40% of elephant reserves are vulnerable, as they are not within protected parks and sanctuaries. Also, the migration corridors have no specific legal protection.
• Forests that have turned into farms and unchecked tourism are blocking animals’ paths. Animals are thus forced to seek alternative routes resulting in increased elephant-human conflict.

Additional Information : Keystone species

• Keystone species is a species whose addition to or loss from an ecosystem leads to major changes in abundance or occurrence of at least one other species. They are considered more important in determining the presence of many other species in that ecosystem.
• All top predators (Tiger, Lion, Crocodile, and Elephant) are considered as keystone species because it regulates all other animals’ population indirectly. Hence top predators are given much consideration in conservation.