Experts call for expanding protected areas around Sigur elephant corridor

The resort lobby’s push to reduce the protections offered by the notification of the Segur Elephant Corridor criticized has come in for criticism by experts who says it is important to preserve passages for elephant movement. They say data, research & observations show elephants use corridor and that effectiveness of the corridors should be judged on how it facilitates movement between different habitats.

A recent appeal by lobbyists for the resort and business owners in the Sigur plateau to reduce the extent of private lands demarcated as part of the notified Sigur elephant corridor has been criticised by experts and conservation biologists studying the movement of the animals in the region.

According to sources, the business owners want the current expanse of private lands, notified as part of the corridor measuring around 7,000 acres, to be reduced to encompass less than 10% of the current area.

Priya Davidar, a conservation biologist who has published several scientific papers on elephant corridors, said the Sigur corridor protects the contiguity of elephant habitats between the Eastern and Western Ghats. “It is important to preserve the passages between villages, and between villages and the mountain to allow the movement of elephants. This redundancy is necessary to protect connectivity. So it would be preposterous to reduce the existing passages to only one corridor of a few hundred meters width under the pretext that restored corridors are narrow,” said Ms. Davidar in a statement to The Hindu.

The lobbyists for the resort industry, whose interests have been affected by the notification, have also claimed that no elephants have known to have crossed from one end of the corridor to the other.

However, Jean-Philippe Puyravaud from the Sigur Nature Trust, said these claims are contrary to data, research and observations. “As early as 1993, Baskaran and others noticed that the few elephants they radio collared (only three) used the Segur plateau. A corridor is never defined by the mere presence of elephants. It is defined based on average movement and genetic similarity. A corridor does not mean that all elephants will be seen travelling from one end of a corridor to the other. It means that on average, the elephant population would tend to follow these tracks,” said Mr. Puyravaud.

The landscape ecologist added that Masinagudi was the most sensitive area in the region and all passages in between settlements and mountains in the area should be preserved in order to have this corridor function. “The Sigur plateau is an important passage for the movement of elephants where the corridor is severely hampered. In the area near Masinagudi, ecosystems are cut by a penstock at Singara, with a passage in between Singara and Masinagudi, then a canal from Masinagudi to Moyar that is barely negotiable at two wildlife bridges,” said Mr. Puyravaud.

Samuel Cushman, a senior fellow in the Wildlife Conservation Research Unit at the University of Oxford, reiterated that a corridor does not need to have an individual animal crossing from one end to the other to be effective.