In a publication titled “The importance of trans-boundary conservation of the Asiatic Elephant Elephas maximus in Patharia Hills Reserve Forest, northeastern India”, scientists have called for “joint conservation activities” for the protection of the herd. The paper was published in the Journal of Threatened Taxa.
About:
Location:
Patheria Hills Reserve Forest, located at the Indo-Bangladesh Border in the Karimganj District of Assam.
The forest falls under the jurisdiction of Patherkandi Range of Karimganj Forest Division, Assam.
Human-elephant conflict:
The forest has been a site of human elephant conflict for decades.
Although the majority of human-elephant conflict cases are undocumented, as per the records of Karimganj Forest Division, there were 112 cases of elephant depredation in the area between 2000 and 2013.
Recent study:
A greater part of the elephants’ habitat lies in southern Assam’s Patharia Hills Reserve Forest, where a lot of illegal settlements have come up in the recent decades.
The elephants stay on both sides of the forest, that is, the sections in India as well as Bangladesh, and cross the border frequently. They have broken border fences to use their migratory corridor.
During the summer, from April to July, the elephants stay in Bangladesh, while in the winter, from November to December, they prefer to remain in the forest patches and tea estates of the Indian side. The elephants’ “shifting pattern of migration may be due to the food shortage on both sides as anthropogenic activities have increased.”
If conservation action is not taken up, the Reserve Forest (RF) will be a dense human settlement area without any trace of wildlife in the near future. Thus scientists have advised trans-boundary conservation for wildlife along the border.
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