Nilgiris Eastern Ghats
The Area
Key Contact
The Nilgiris Eastern Ghats landscape harbors the greatest number of Asian elephants in the world, with an estimated 6,300 to 10,000 living in the habitats that range from evergreen forest and dry deciduous forest to thorn scrub jungle and grasslands. Other large mammals such as Gaur, Sambar and Tiger also abound in the landscape.
The landscape covers an area of over 12,000 Sq. kms. The landscape comprises Elephant Reserve 7 of Project Elephant, a conservation project of Indian Government. The population of elephants extends along the western Ghats from the Brahmagiri hills in the west, south through.WWF-India AREAS Programme in its first phase is concentrating on securing the river Moyar Elephant Corridor. The corridor is located at the junction of Eastern Ghats and Western Ghats in the Southern part of the India. It maintains the contiguity between the Thallamalai Plateau in the east, the Mudumalai wildlife sanctuary in the west and Bandipur Tiger Reserve in the north.
The entire corridor is crucial for the genetic flow, dispersal of free ranging animals and has been extensively used by elephants to migrate to Eastern Ghats. The importance of securing this corridor for maintaining contiguity of habitat between different areas of the landscape is thus inevitable.
The Threats
The corridor faces the threat of habitat fragmentation due to human settlements and cultivation in its various divisions. The large human population has made substantial impact on the vegetation in some regions. The causes includes extraction of fuel wood, collection of NTFP's (non-timber forest produce), grazing by domestic livestock and feral buffaloes. This has led to the degradation of the corridor, resulting in the loss of the connectivity between the habitats.
Given to the extensive cultivation and abundant elephant population, this corridor faces serious problems of man-elephant conflict. Crop depredation by elephants is common in many divisions of the corridor. This has led to the increase in the cases of man-elephant conflict. Further, growing demand of ivory and hide has led to the increase in poaching of elephants in the area.
WWF India Interventions
The Nilgiris Eastern Ghats Landscape aims to conserve Asian Elephants by securing the Greater Moyar Elephant Corridor connecting Mudumalai WLS to the Satyamangalam Forest Division of the Nilgiri-Eastern Ghats Elephant Landscape in the state of Tamilnadu. WWF India and its partners are working to secure forested corridors in the landscape, reduce man-animal conflicts and strengthen antipoaching efforts.
Conservation Action
- Establishing anti-poaching camp in sector one of the Greater Moyar Corridor.
- Reducing man-elephant conflict.
- Reducing biotic pressure in the sector one of the corridor- Of the nine villages in the sector, AREAS India is going to support two villages. The remaining seven villages are being taken by the ongoing projects of USFWS.
- Awareness on wildlife conservation with special focus on elephants. The target will be children as well as adults pushing forward the idea of 'Shared Habitats'. Two trained field educators will be employed who will aware the masses by organizing workshops on different environmental issues.
- Documentation for acquiring pieces of land critical for maintaining the sanctity of the corridor.
- Capacity building by training of field personnel in anti-poaching and wildlife management.
- For long-term monitoring and evaluation of the corridor, historic data as well as benchmark data will be collected by the AREAS field officer and will be overlaid on the GIS domain. This will be related to human and cattle populations and their extent of forest use, movement and habitat used by migrating elephant groups and other conflicting issues including poaching etc.
