Data from a shelved government census report on elephants say there has been a 20% decline in the population of the pachyderm in 5-year period between 2017 and 2022.
The government hasn’t released the report citing a delay in the census in the Northeast.
The data shows the Central Indian and Eastern Ghats recorded an alarming 41% dip by 2022 compared with 2017 estimates.
The unreleased report identifies “mushrooming developmental projects” such as “unmitigated mining and linear infrastructure construction” as significant threats to the species.
The final report, including the estimation of elephants in the northeast, is expected by the end of June 2025.
The elephant census is conducted every five years by the Wildlife Institute of India (WII), an autonomous body under the ministry. The unreleased report, authored by seven scientists and officials of the Dehradun-based WII and its nodal ministry in New Delhi, is the first-ever “scientific” estimate of India’s elephant population.
In the Central Indian and Eastern Ghats cluster which saw the biggest slide in elephant population, Southern West Bengal, Jharkhand and Orissa saw the maximum loss — 84%, 68% and 54%, respectively. These three regions saw a drop of nearly 1,700 elephants, of which up to 400 could have moved to other states in the landscape such as Chhattisgarh, Madhya Pradesh and Andhra Pradesh.
The drop in the Western Ghats could be as high as 18%, primarily due to a slide in the elephant population of Kerala by nearly 2,900 (51%) from the revised estimate of 2017. Only the northern population of Shivalik hills and Gangetic plains appeared stable with a marginal 2% drop.
Since there was no deadline in sight for the Northeast because of already delayed census for the five-year cycle, it was decided to publish the report for the rest of India and later add a volume for the Northeast. But there was a change of plan at the last minute and now the Northeast data would be included.
The report urged future strategies to be aligned with the goals of strengthening corridors and connectivity, restoring habitat, enhancing protection, mitigating developmental projects, and ensuring the support of local communities for elephant conservation.
Specifically, the report highlighted the fragmentation of the east-central landscape by “unmitigated mining and linear infrastructure construction” which “has prompted long-ranging elephants to venture into historical range, but currently unoccupied areas,” fuelling human-elephant conflicts. Poaching, railway collisions, and electrocution by power lines are the other threats identified in this landscape.
The report also warned that the once-contiguous elephant population in the Western Ghats — southern Maharashtra to Kerala — is “rapidly disconnecting due to changing land use, including expanding commercial plantations (coffee and tea), farmland fencing, human encroachment and mushrooming developmental projects.”
Even the relatively stable Shivalik-Terai population in Uttarakhand and Uttar Pradesh, the report noted, “confronts significant threats… from encroachments, forest clearing, monoculture, and invasive species” as well as intensified agriculture and linear infrastructure.
In the Northeast, the report found that the elephant populations are scattered in a mosaic dominated by human habitations, tea plantations, mines, oil refineries and linear infrastructure, making their movements and lives precarious. The report also identified poaching for ivory as a major threat in this landscape.
Hinting at the absence of robust data in the Northeast, the report called for a “focused estimation exercise… to comprehensively assess occupancy and abundance to devise specific conservation actions.”
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