A recent appeal by lobbyists for the resort and business owners in the Sigur plateau to reduce the extent of private lands demarcated as part of the notified Sigur elephant corridor has been criticised by experts and conservation biologists studying the movement of the animals in the region.
According to sources, the business owners want the current expanse of private lands, notified as part of the corridor measuring around 7,000 acres, to be reduced to encompass less than 10% of the current area.
Priya Davidar, a conservation biologist who has published several scientific papers on elephant corridors, said the Sigur corridor protects the contiguity of elephant habitats between the Eastern and Western Ghats. “It is important to preserve the passages between villages, and between villages and the mountain to allow the movement of elephants. This redundancy is necessary to protect connectivity. So it would be preposterous to reduce the existing passages to only one corridor of a few hundred meters width under the pretext that restored corridors are narrow,” said Ms. Davidar in a statement to The Hindu.
The lobbyists for the resort industry, whose interests have been affected by the notification, have also claimed that no elephants have known to have crossed from one end of the corridor to the other.
However, Jean-Philippe Puyravaud from the Sigur Nature Trust, said these claims are contrary to data, research and observations. “As early as 1993, Baskaran and others noticed that the few elephants they radio collared (only three) used the Segur plateau. A corridor is never defined by the mere presence of elephants. It is defined based on average movement and genetic similarity. A corridor does not mean that all elephants will be seen travelling from one end of a corridor to the other. It means that on average, the elephant population would tend to follow these tracks,” said Mr. Puyravaud.
The landscape ecologist added that Masinagudi was the most sensitive area in the region and all passages in between settlements and mountains in the area should be preserved in order to have this corridor function. “The Sigur plateau is an important passage for the movement of elephants where the corridor is severely hampered. In the area near Masinagudi, ecosystems are cut by a penstock at Singara, with a passage in between Singara and Masinagudi, then a canal from Masinagudi to Moyar that is barely negotiable at two wildlife bridges,” said Mr. Puyravaud.
Samuel Cushman, a senior fellow in the Wildlife Conservation Research Unit at the University of Oxford, reiterated that a corridor does not need to have an individual animal crossing from one end to the other to be effective.
“Corridors are often networks of multiple and diffusive pathways that individuals use in part at different times. A biological corridor is not defined based on the observation that any single animal has traversed its full length from one end to the other. Corridor effectiveness is judged based on how it facilitates movement across the landscape, which may include individuals traversing the full length of the corridor, or more often traversing parts of it. Again, however, the main point is that seeing wide elephant use in the area surrounding the corridor is not a reason to not protect it. It is a reason to increase protection in a broader area reflecting the core area of the local population,” said Mr. Cushman.
According to him, the Sigur landscape is a “critical node of central connection” between elephant populations in the Western Ghats. “It is likely a key core area of this population and thus, it should have a higher and broader degree of protection beyond the current delineated corridor,” he added.
One of the expert committee members, constituted by the government which was responsible for getting the current area notified, the validity of which was upheld by both the High Court as well as Supreme Court, stated that issues raised by lobbyists for the resort industry were tantamount to being in contempt of court. “The fact is that since the notification of the corridor, and removal of infrastructure that restricts the movement of elephants in the region, such as fences, that the number of negative interactions between humans and elephants in the region have reduced significantly, proving that the corridor is working as intended,” said the expert committee member, preferring to speak to The Hindu on condition of anonymity.
