Arunachal, Assam told to ready elephant corridor plan

THE WILDLIFE division of the Union Ministry of Environment, Forest and Climate change, on March 15, has directed the forest departments of Arunachal Pradesh and Assam to coordinate and prepare a proposal to notify the Dulung-subansiri elephant corridor downstream of the 2000 MW Lower Subansiri hydroelectric project.

The proposal to demarcate the corridor would be presented during the next meeting of the National Board for Wildlife (NBWL), which is the apex government body on wildlife conservation and regulation of development projects in wildlife areas. Notification of the elephant corridor will involve physically marking the relevant areas used by elephants on the ground as well as potentially notifying parts of the corridor as either a wildlife sanctuary or a conservation reserve.

Including the corridor as part of a legally notified protected area will provide legal sanctity to it. An expert committee of the NBWL, which was inspecting the compliance of conditions imposed on Arunachal Pradesh government, as part of the clearance of the hydroelectric project, had recommended the notification of the elephant corridor in May last year.

The ministry’s directions to the state departments come in the backdrop of the NBWL’S meeting in January this year, which saw deliberations on ways to protect the critical elephant corridor.

During the deliberations with NBWL, members of wildlife board had concluded that this corridor is important, as it facilitates east-west movement of elephants across the Subansiri River, and thus the state governments should act upon its demarcation and notification on the ground. The corridor presently allows east-west movement for elephants across the Subansiri River, but it is fragile and requires urgent restoration efforts, the NBWL had noted. “Each state could notify the area of the corridor falling in their respective jurisdiction as conservation reserve under Wild Life (Protection) Act, 1972”, H S Singh, a NBWL member, had said.

The wildlife board’s recommendation to the states was based on the Wildlife Institute of

India’s (WII) rapid assessment of the elephant corridor, which looked at the corridor’s functionality to elephants as well as the potential impacts of the hydroelectric projects and related developments on the corridor. The NBWL had commissioned the rapid assessment last year to recommend ways to ensure connectivity between Panir reserve forest and Dulung reserve forest.

The 2000 MW Lower Subansiri, executed by the National Hydroelectric Power Corporation (NHPC), has been in the works since 2003 and is yet to be commissioned. It is located in Kamle and Dhemaji districts of Arunachal Pradesh and Assam, respectively and is being constructed on Subansiri river, a tributary of Brahmaputra River.