GUWAHATI, Sep 23: Amid rising incidence of human-elephant conflicts in Meghalaya of late, Aaranyak, a leading biodiversity conservation organisation, has initiated a three-year project in West Garo Hills to enable human-elephant coexistence.
Launched in collaboration with the British Asian Trust and support from the Darwin Initiative, the project primarily aims to reduce the negative impact of human-elephant conflicts in the affected areas and promote coexistence.
“Meghalaya harbours about 1,700 wild Asian elephants. During 2019-2022, 12 persons lost their lives in human-elephant conflicts. Such conflicts negatively impact both elephants and humans in the form of crop and property damage, loss of human lives and retaliatory killing of the elephants, which is undermining the conservation efforts to safeguard the elephants and human well-being,” a statement issued by Aaranyak said on Friday.
It may be noted that Aaranyak has signed a memorandum of understanding (MoU) with the Forest department for biodiversity conservation, including mitigation of human and wildlife conflicts.
Under the MoU, Aaranyak will work cohesively with the state’s Forest department to address the issue of human-elephant conflicts in six pre-selected villages of West Garo Hills.
The ambitious project flagged off with an inception workshop organised at the Circuit House in Tura on Thursday.
The workshop was graced by West Garo Hills deputy commissioner Swapnil Tambe, besides police, forest and other government officials from various departments, representatives of various organisations, Nokma Council, students groups and members of local communities.
“Elephant corridors must be revived for long-term conservation,” the DC said, while stressing on convergence with different relevant agencies to facilitate coexistence.
Conservator of forests SN Sangma gave glimpses of his experiences on human-elephant conflicts and how the forest department has been facilitating reducing human-elephant conflicts through various initiatives such as creation of 63 protection squads.
Additional Superintendant of Police Vikas Kumar too shared his experiences and observation on human-elephant conflicts and spoke on how enforcement agencies could help address the issue as well.
Participants from six villages of West Garo Hills, namely Jamdamgre, Borogobol, Bandukmalli, Darensegre, Kharsingdap, Potamati and Bordupi, took part in the workshop and shared potential measures to resolve such conflicts.
Bibhuti Prasad Lahkar, a senior scientist with Aaranyak, presented a talk on the current human-elephant conflict scenario in the state, highlighting how Aaranyak has planned to enable coexistence through educating local communities, supplementing livelihoods and providing mitigation tools.
