World Elephant Day 2021
New Delhi: Minister for Environment, Forest and Climate Change Bhupender Yadav today released the population estimation protocol to be adopted in the exercise to be taken up for the All India elephant and tiger population estimation in 2022. The Ministry of Environment, Forest and Climate Change (MoEFCC), for the first time is converging elephant and tiger population estimation, the protocol for which was released today on the occasion of World Elephant Day.
Elephant is the natural heritage animal of India and the country also celebrates the World Elephant Day to spread awareness towards conservation of the species. Besides, the day is celebrated globally to bring attention of various stakeholders to support various conservation policies to help elephants, including improving enforcement policies to prevent the illegal poaching and trade of ivory, conserving elephant habitats, providing better treatment for captive elephants and reintroducing some captive elephants into sanctuaries.
Asian elephants are listed as “Endangered” on the IUCN Red List of threatened species. This has been done as most of the range states except India, have lost their viable elephant populations due to loss of habitats and poaching. The current population estimates indicate that there are about 50,000 -60000 Asian elephants in the world. More than 60 % of the population is held in India.
Indian Elephant has also been listed in the Appendix I of the Convention of the Migratory species in the recently concluded Conference of Parties of CMS 13 at Gandhi Nagar, Gujarat in February 2020.
Speaking on the occasion, the Union Environment Minister stressed on the involvement of local and indigenous people in the Conservation of elephants and said that a bottom up approach is the way forward, which will also help in minimising human-elephant conflict as well.
Yadav said that there has been a pressing need to improve and harmonize the population estimation methods along more scientific lines in various states across India and expressed happiness that the Ministry for the first time is converging both elephant and tiger population estimation.
– global bihari bureau
