AGARTALA, September 8 (TIWN): To arrest men-elephant conflict in foothills, Tripura government okays the plan to develop an elephant reserved spreading over 123.84 sqkm forest in Baramura and Debtamura hill ranges in south-eastern part of the state.The council of ministers recently has cleared the policy nod to establish the elephant corridor at it’s own funding after formulating strategy with all stakeholders, officials said here on Monday.Tripura has been persuading for an elephant conservation corridor at Atharamura-Baramura-Debtamura ranges but the amendment of Wildlife Protection Act 2003 has prevented the move.

“The existing provision of the Act does not allow us conservation reserve for elephant in the proposed area hence, the state government undertakes initiative to protect wild animal, forest and environment,” the wildlife officials pointed out.

They stated that the government has constituted a high level committee including wildlife experts to go ahead with the plan for wild animals in their habitats at the stretch called Gandhari.

As per official record, there are as many as 13 major incidents of men-elephant conflicts reported in the state in past five years where a huge amount of crop have been destroyed by the wild elephant and monkeys in habitations of the hill ranges.

The latest census revealed that in Atharamura-Baramura-Debtamura stretch at least 59 elephants are residing and due to food crisis periodically they came out in human settlement.

The proposed elephant conservation move is included restriction of human activities in forest land to help regeneration of natural forest and also to plant a few selected helpful species for wild animals, which will provide sufficient food and comfort of elephant and monkeys in the region, they added.

“The men are responsible for the situation because they destroyed the animal habitation and now losing the habitats animals are coming to the villagers,” alleged forest minister Naresh Jamatia.

He said the state government had made some preventive measures by constructing big water bodies in two locations to save the pachyderms and to prevent men-elephant conflict in Atharamura range under MGNREGA fund.

“The demarcation of elephant reserve aims at ecological restoration of existing natural habitats and migratory routes of elephants, promotion of measures for mitigation of man elephant conflict in crucial habitats, reducing impact of human and domestic activities in crucial elephant habitats and strengthening of measures for protection of wild elephants from poachers and unnatural causes of death,” attributed Jamatia.

Meanwhile, the NGOs and nature conservationists accused government for indiscriminate allotment of land Scheduled Tribes and Traditional Forest Dwellers (Recognition of Forest Rights) Act, 2006 (RoFR).

Tripura is considered to be one of the frontliners in the country that has successfully implemented RoFR. The Left Front government in Tripura has distributed rights (patta) of about 1.76 lac hectare lands to 19000 odd forests dwelling tribal families so far, which has been blamed for destruction of natural forest by allowing people to get access in forest.

The Project Elephant was launched in February 1992 as a centrally sponsored scheme to focus conservation action on the Asian Elephant and its habitat following reduction and fragmentation of habitat and consequent isolation of populations into small and genetically unviable units.