The Union Environment Ministry has constituted a “permanent” coordination committee that includes the Ministry of Railways and the Environment Ministry to prevent elephant deaths on railway tracks, Environment Minister Bhupender Yadav, said in a written response to a question in the Lok Sabha on Monday.
Mr. Yadav said that 19 elephants were killed across the country on railway tracks in 2018-19, 14 in 2019-20 and 12 in 2020-21. Several steps were taken to reduce the number of elephants deaths, the minister noted.
These included making permanent and temporary speed restrictions in identified elephant corridors and habitats, making underpasses and ramps for movement of elephants at identified locations, providing fencing at selected locations, erecting signages to warn train drivers about identified elephant corridors, sensitising train crew and station masters to avoid train collisions with elephants, clearing vegetation on the sides of track within railway land, deputing Forest Department staff in railway control offices to liaison with railway authorities, engaging elephant trackers by the forest departments for timely action by alerting station masters and engine drivers as well as coordinating meetings between state forest departments and railway departments.
The Wildlife Institute of India, an autonomous body of the Environment Ministry, in consultation with the Ministry of Environment Forest and Climate Change, National Highway Authority, National Tiger Conservation Authority and World Bank Group has published a document named ‘Eco-Friendly Measures to Mitigate Impacts of Linear Infrastructure’ to assist project agencies in designing linear infrastructure, including railway lines, to reduce human-animal conflicts.
Railway collisions were the second-largest reason for the unnatural deaths of elephants despite tracts being specifically demarcated and notified as elephant passages, the Comptroller and Auditor General, said in a report last December.
A Standing Committee on the Railways in 2013 had recommended restricting the speed of trains at vulnerable locations to reduce chances of collisions. This specifically translated into trains slowing down to 50 kilometre per hour (kmph) or less in vulnerable locations.
