Elephant Research and Conservation Project

1. GOLAGHAT ELEPHANT PROJECT

What is the Project all about?

The project has been initiated in October 2005 in some of the villages in Golaghat district that are worst affected by human-elephant conflict. The project is an endeavor to mitigate this conflict through community participation and governmental support. The project has been supported by the US Fish and Wildlife Service

Various Activities under the Project

The project intends to demonstrate and convince affected communities to adopt elephant friendly strategies to deal with elephant depredation. A detailed map of the elephant corridors in the area has been prepared till mid April 2006 under the project which will be further updated based on field based inputs.

Forest Officials of Golaghat had a look at the GIS Map produced by Aaranyak	Awareness camp organized by Aaranyak under the project involving communities.

Under the project various conservation orientation programme has been done in various conflict sites of Golaghat District to sensitize the local people and other stake holders on the state of the forest and need for better co-existence with the elephants.

The project also provides limited in-kind contribution to local communities during the elephant depredation period with burnt oil and crackers to chase away the elephant herd from entering their crop fields in Golaghat District. This support has been offered on experimental basis only. The experiment proved that such kind of in-kind contribution would assist the affected communities to reduce the loss of their crop fields from the marauding elephant herd specially during the cropping seasons. Further Aaranyak has also put some hoardings in the National Highway bisecting elephant habitats in Golaghat District to reduce road accident between vehicles and elephants.

Signage are placed strategically to aware passing vehicles about elephant corridor and road crossing elephants

Under this project till March 2006, six Self help Groups have been formed in the depredated villages involving local communities keeping in view the gender balance. Two SHGs have established Patchouli Nursery which acts as elephant repellent crop. Other four SHGs are weaving based enterprises run by women folks of the elephant depredated villages of Golaghat district. Two more SHGs would be formed in coming weeks. Patchouli has been tried for the first time as elephant repellent involving local communities to take this effort as part of diversified livelihood generation options.

What will we do in the future?

The project will be continued till September 2006 and within this time assessment would also be made about other viable mitigation strategies that could be successfully implemented in the area. Further conservation-management plan based on the study and Geo-spatial database that would be made out of this project and the resource information system for the Golaghat area will act as a blue print, a real vade-mecum, for the Forest Department, conservation agencies and researchers for sustaining their conservation efforts in future for effective elephant conservation and management in the area.

© Aaranyak 2001-2006, Email:info@aaranyak.org