Page 24 - Demo

Penning the Diary
Successful Restraint & Translocation
of Problem Elephants to Mitigate
HEC in West Bengal .
Subrata Pal Chowdhury, Technical Assistant, West Bengal FD
Of the 680 elephants present in West Bengal, around 488 ele- phants occur in Darjeeling, Kalimpong Jalpaiguri and Alipur- duar districts in North Bengal (Lower Gangetic Plains (07B)),
spread across 3051 Sq. Km. Around 194 elephants are found in Purulia, Paschim Midnapur, Jhargram and Bankura districts in South Bengal (Deccan Peninsula-Chota Nagpur (06B)), over a range of 22,487 Sq. Km. Elephant population has increased in West Bengal from about 150 in 1978 to 682 in 2017.
Although human – elephant conflict was prevalent in North Bengal for a long time, the problem started in South Bengal by end of De- cember 1987 when 35-50 elephants migrated from Dalma hills of Jamshedpur, Jharkhand (earlier Bihar) to adjoining Midnapore dis- trict. Though there was no true elephant habitat in those areas, visit- ing wild elephants preferred to stay on foraging on cultivated crops in the villages. They used large forest patches with abundant water sources as refuges.
Many calves born in West Bengal over last three decades have prob- ably become adults or sub-adults and have become residents of the area. They seem to have extensive knowledge of their home range, availability of food and water. The elephants have developed adap- tations to occur in human dominated areas, which during last few decades had resulted in large scale human-elephant conflict (HEC). HEC besides being a key elephant conservation concern is also a ma- jor socio-economic and political issue.
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