A jumbo right of passage 

A Supreme Court-appointed committee recently declared 12 private resorts, along the Segur elephant corridor, illegal. The committee considered the objections raised by the owners of the 12 resorts, who had challenged the validity of the elephant corridor notification issued in 2010. The owners had mainly contended that the corridor did not comprise any elephant habitat. Experts say the order will help to protect the corridor for generations to come

The Kalhatti Ghat Road plunges into the Segur plateau on the outskirts of Udhagamandalam. The road aprons are ideal points for viewing the vast expanse of the magnificent plateau in almost its full splendour.

Looking down with a pair of binoculars from the 13th hairpin bend of the road, tourists can see the Kalhatti stream meandering down the plateau, eventually meeting the Sigurhalla River, the Moyar and the Bhavani Sagar Dam further downstream. The area, comprising Mudumalai, Nagarhole, Bandipur, Sathyamangalam and Wayanad, forms part of the Nilgiri Biosphere Reserve, a tract measuring over 5,000 square kilometre, which is home to the largest population of Asian elephants in the world, numbering over 6,000, says Priya Davidar, a conservation biologist who lives in the Segur plateau region. Ms. Davidar adds that the Segur elephant corridor, notified by the Tamil Nadu government in 2010, is a critical “elephant corridor that links these habitats to the Eastern Ghats”.

A Supreme Court-appointed committee recently ruled in favour of protecting the corridor. It passed orders that declared 12 private resorts, along the corridor, illegal. The court had mandated that the committee, comprising a retired judge and two prominent conservationists, look into the objections raised by the owners of the 12 resorts who had challenged the validity of the elephant corridor notification. The committee passed its recent orders on the objections from the resort owners. The court had ordered the closure of 27 other resorts in 2018.

Ms. Davidar explains that the Segur elephant corridor is of global importance not only for elephants but also for other animals like tigers. “It is also home to the largest population of three critically endangered species of vultures in southern India.”

The Segur Corridor Inquiry Committee, in the orders passed against illegal resorts, said the resort owners had put up “illegal structures” invariably in the land abutting reserve forests and streams frequently used by the elephants. “...By erecting power fences, the resorts have hindered the movement of elephants in critical parts of the corridor.” The committee also said, “…unless their [Asian elephants] migratory corridors between their habitats are preserved”, the habitats would be fragmented, resulting in the extinction of the elephant population.

One of the main contentions of the resort owners was that parts of the elephant corridor did not comprise elephant habitats. But the committee highlighted the High Court’s observations while upholding the validity of the notification. “The High Court also held that any absence of elephants from the areas surrounding the appellants’ resorts was, in fact, due to the construction activities of the appellants, whereby access of the elephants has been restricted through erection of electric fencing,” the committee said.

Samuel Cushman, of the Wildlife Conservation Research Unit at the University of Oxford’s Department of Biology, says in an email that wildlife corridors are often “networks of multiple and diffusive pathways that individuals use in part at different times... Corridor effectiveness is judged on how it facilitates movement across the landscape, which may include individuals traversing the full length of the corridor, or more often, traversing parts of it.”