| Wild elephants One can very well imagine that in former times, when there were fewer people, forests were plentiful, and hunting for commercial purposes was negligible, Indian forests were teeming with elephants. The Moghul Emperor Jehangir (1605-27) was said to have had about 113 000 captive elephants in his empire (Lahiri Choudhury, 1988). The number of wild elephants during that period must have been many times greater than that. Since then, wild elephants have become extirpated from many states in central and northern India. Loss of habitat coupled with hunting and capturing have considerably reduced the elephant population in India in recent times. Elephants are now found in India in four non-adjoining geographical areas of the country: the northeast, the east, the northwest and the south, totalling about 86 000 sq km. The first ever estimate of the elephant population can perhaps be credited to F.W. Champion who in 1938 reported a maximum number of 250 elephants in the State of Uttar Pradesh (Daniel, 1998). Formal surveys and census surveys of wild elephants on a national scale started towards the end of the 1970s. The Asian Elephant Specialist Group (AESG) of the IUCN Species Survival Commission provided the first estimate of wild elephants in India in 1980 as 14 800-16 455 (Daniel, 1980). The AESG provided the next estimate in 1985 as 16 590-21 361 (Anon., 1985). Sukumar reported the elephant population in India in 1989 as between 17 635 and 24 090 (Anon., 1993). Santiapillai and Jackson (1990) have cited 17 310- 22 120 as the wild elephant population in India. Daniel (1998) has quoted the elephant population in 1993 as between 22 796 and 28 346. Detailed censuses of wild elephants have been carried out in different states in India between 1997 and 2000. The latest available estimates indicate the following distribution of wild elephants: 9 401 in the northeast (Assam, Arunachal Pradesh, Meghalaya and Nagaland), 2 772 in the east (Bihar, Jharkhand and Orissa), 1 000-1 984 in the northwest (Uttar Pradesh and Uttranchal) and 14 853 in the south (Andhra Pradesh, Karnataka, Kerala and Tamilnadu). About 114-180 wild elephants also exist in the three northeastern States of Manipur, Tripura and Mizoram as well as on the Andaman & Nicobar Islands. Hence, the present population of wild elephants in India can be said to be in the range of 28 140-29 190 Apparently, the wild elephant population in India has been showing an increasing trend. But the situation is not really promising. Significant decline in the habitat and population of elephants has been observed in the northeastern states. Even in the southern states of Kerala, Karnataka and Tamilnadu, where elephants have increased in number, poaching of tuskers for ivory has impaired the demographic structure of elephant populations. The proportion of mature bulls in these states has declined, considerably disturbing the sex ratio. In Bandipur Tiger Reserve (Karnataka) and Madumalai Sanctuary (Tamilnadu) the ratio of adult male to adult female has been reported to be between 1:12 to 1:15, whereas in Periyar Tiger Reserve (Kerala) this ratio has been stated to be around 1:100 (Menon et al., 1997). Such abnormal sex ratios do not bode well for the future growth of these populations. Elephants are also moving to new regions on account of disturbances in their original home ranges. In fact, the elephants found in Andhra Pradesh have been migrants from Tamilnadu since 1984. |
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