Since 1987, large numbers of elephants from Dalma Hills, in East
Singbhum district of Jharkhand, have been entering the densely
populated districts of Midnapore and Bankura in West Bengal.
Predictably, this has resulted in human-elephant conflict of enormous
proportion.
In 2003, the Singhbhum Elephant Study was initiated by the Wildlife
Protection Society of India (WPSI) to assess the probable reasons why
wild elephants have been leaving the well-forested Dalma Wildlife
Sanctuary in Jharkhand, and moving into locations wholly unsuited to
these high-consuming animals. The study successfully identified the
dissection of traditional transit paths - through Paschmi Singbhum in
Jharkhand and into Keonjhar district of Orissa - as one of the reasons
why the elephants had selected such unlikely places as post-monsoon
habitat. It was the first such research on the dispersal behaviour of
the Singbhum elephants
The
‘Corridor to Survival’
project initiated in May 2006, was a natural sequel to the Singhbhum
Elephant Study. It was largely designed to: (i) identify the causes for
disruption of the elephants’ transition paths through traditional
use areas, (ii) map the Elephant Transit Paths (ETPs) of the recent
past, (iii) identify present paths connecting northern Orissa with
Jharkhand, and (iv) assess the habitat status in relation to
biogeography of the use areas. The primary aim of the study was to
develop a Management Plan for Elephant Landscape Design. This included
the development of site-specific habitat management procedures for the
re-creation of lost transit paths, that would ensure the
uninterrupted movement of elephants between the northern limits of
their traditional distribution range at Dalma Hills in Jharkhand, to
Keonjhar in Orissa.
This is no easy task. The elephants have to cross two canals near Dalma
Wildlife Sanctuary in Jharkhand, railway crossings, human habitation,
and finally a web of iron ore mines. But miraculously it is feasible,
for there are still patches of forests with sufficient seasonal food
through their traditional migration routes.
The present study has found that small groups of elephants have started
venturing south of Dalma into the Seraikella Forest Division, and then
further down towards the jungles of Saranda in Jharkhand, bordering the
Orissa highlands. Unfortunately, here the elephants face a predicament
worse than any in the past - the destruction of their traditional
transit paths by open-cast iron ore mines. The recent rise in demand
for iron ore in domestic as well as international markets has ensured
the diversion of large patches of forests for mining. Presently, more
than 100 leases are in operation in the northern mining belt of
Keonjhar district in Orissa, in addition to other industrial units that
have been set up to support the mines. The mining boom became apparent
here in 2002, around the same time that the Olympics Games was
announced in China. The world experienced an
unprecedented growth in
demand for finished steel, which in turn created a rise in demand for
iron ore, the raw material need for steel manufacturing. Beneath the
1,500 km2 of well-forested land in the Keonjhar and Sundergarh
districts of Orissa and the Paschimi Singhbum district of Jharkhand,
lies an estimated 5 billion tons of high-grade iron ore.
In Jharkhand and Orissa, 2,000 and almost 5,000 hectares respectively,
of prime Elephant habitat is now under the miners’ shovels,
erasing all signs of the forest corridors that have been used by
elephants for thousands of year. This has forced the wild elephants to
move into areas where they have not been recorded in the recent past,
and has resulted in a phenomenal rise in human-elephant conflict. The
enormity of the threat to the survival of wild elephants in eastern
India can be clearly seen by comparing records of elephant mortality,
before and after the increase in mining activities in the region (see
chart).
