KAZIRANGA, Aug 28 - Sober and migratory by nature, elephants need an extended area to roam freely.
Normally, an elephant needs about 250 to 300 kg of fodder, and thus it spends about 16 hours or even more daily to gather their food. They instinctively follow the same route that their elders had been following over the years. But due to human interference followed by anthropogenic activities, the actual corridors are either on the verge of extiction, or some are already blocked by industrial establishments in the name of development.
Numaligargh Refinery Limited in Golaghat district is one such industrial setup which has been pulled up by the National Green Tribunal for obstructing an animal corridor by constructing a huge wall, thereby inviting direct conflict with the pachyderms.
It may be recalled that the present Numaligargh Refinery Limited township once happened to be a breeding ground of the wild elephants, which was greatly disturbed in due course with the setting up of the NRL township. Incidentally, the area was declared a No Development Zone in 1996.
According to a wildlife biologist working in this field, who did not wish to be named, said there is no animal corridor management plan outside the park area of Kaziranga. There is no Government gazette notification for the protection and management of wildlife corridor in Assam, thereby resulting in the current crisis.
Even though the Government has constituted so many committees, but those are not satisfactorily empowered to initiate any legal action against the industrial houses, or for that matter, any public sector undertaking. That is the reason why the problem has persisted so long as the Assam Government has not cared to issue any specific notification for the management of animal corridors outside any park area or any protected forest area.
It is worth mentioning that the National Green Tribunal has asked the State Government to declare the Deopahar area of Numaligarh as a reserved forest, as propped in 1999. The need of the hour is to formally notify the wildlife corridor areas of Assam as protected area under the State forest law.
