Travel and wildlife enthusiasts rejoice! A new elephant reserve will soon be ready in the joint forest area of Dudhwa and Pilibhit Tiger Reserve in UP. The demarcated region is slated to be notified as Terai Elephant Reserve within the next two months.
This reserve, which is gonna be a new escape for nature lovers will come up in an area of 3000 square kilometres and will revive Project Elephant 1992, here’s how!
Reviving Project Elephant, 1992
Notably, the Terai Elephant Reserve will be set up under the Project Elephant (1992) by the Ministry of Environment and Forests, Government of India. This initiative aims to offer financial and technical support to wildlife management efforts by states for their free-ranging populations of Asian Elephants.
Additionally, the project focuses on ensuring the long-term survival of the elephants’ population in their natural habitats by protecting them, their habitats and the common migration corridors.
A boon for farmers in the area!
Apart from preserving the endangered species of elephants and their habitat, this initiative will also prove to be extremely beneficial for the farmers of this region. Since elephants have frequent conflicts with humans, they tend to have a high risk of not only harming themselves but also destroying properties, damaging crops and hurting people.
As per official data, the Dudhwa Tiger Reserve has a total of 149 wild elephants and 25 other camp pachyderms at present, including male, female and calves.
Experts claim that most of the wild elephants at DTR have come from Nepal’s Royal Shuklaphanta Wildlife Sanctuary in search of food, water and unhindered shelter.
With the notification of TER, the farmers in Ramnagar, Dhakia Talluke Mahrajpur, Gunhan, Gorakhdibbi and other Pilibhit villages will be eligible to avail of financial assistance from the central government. TER will make the farmers eligible to apply for compensation for crop damage by migratory elephants during the monsoon season.
Reserve to mitigate human-elephant conflict
Talking about the TER, Sanjay Singh, the Chief Wildlife Warden of Uttar Pradesh said,”The new elephant reserve, which has been approved in-principle by the Government of India, will be known as Terai Elephant Reserve (TER). The project aims to protect wild elephants, their habitats and corridors. Additionally, the reserve would also help in mitigating human-elephant conflict in the Terai region, thereby, protecting farmers and villagers living in the Indo-Nepal border areas of Pilibhit and Lakhimpur Kheri.”
“We will not need to frame any additional rules and regulations for TER as the norms of an elephant reserve have precise similarities with those of a tiger reserve in terms of ensuring the safety, security and the protection of forest and wildlife,” added the Chief Wildlife Warden.
