16th Steering Committee Meeting Of Project Elephant:
At the 16th Steering Committee meeting of Project Elephant, the Ministry of Environment, Forest and Climate Change launched a field manual named-Field Manual for Managing Human-Elephant Conflicts (HEC) in India-to guide forest staffers dealing with HEC in major elephant range states.
- The manual has been prepared by the ministry, along with the Wildlife Institute of India (WWI) and World Wide Fund for Nature (WWF India).
- It contains the detailed best practices of minimizing human-elephant conflict.
- It is drafted with the aim of providing forest officials/ departments and other stakeholders with guidance towards interventions to help mitigate Human Elephant Conflict, both in emergencies and when conflict poses a recurring challenge.
Current Data on Elephants in India:
- India is home to approximately around 27,000 Asian Elephants, which is the world’s largest population of the species.
- As per Elephant Census (2017), Karnataka has the highest number of elephants (6,049), followed by Assam (5,719) and Kerala (3,054).
