The establishment of Terai Elephant Reserve in Uttar Pradesh has finally been approved. Let’s know what it is and how it works…
The Terai Elephant Reserve, spanning across 3,049 sq km area, will be the 33rd elephant reserve to be set up in India. It will be in the joint forest regions of Dudhwa and Piliphit tiger reserves involved in the conservation of tiger, Asian elephant, swamp deer and one-horned rhinoceros.
This comes as the third elephant reserve to get approval from the Union Environment Ministry in the past three months under Project Elephant, with the other two being Lemru in Chhattisgarh and Agasthymalai in Tamil Nadu.
The establishment of the new elephant reserve will help conserve the trans-boundary migration of elephant populations. It will help protect the neighbouring villages in the Indo-Nepal border area of Uttar Pradesh. It will also help in the management of grassland and elephant corridor in Dudhwa and Piliphit tiger reserves.
The Central Government launched Project Elephant in 1992 to provide financial and technical aid to states for the protection of free-ranging population of wild Asian elephants. This centrally sponsored scheme aims to ensure long-term survival of Asian elephants in their natural habitats by protecting them, their habitats and migration corridors.
