COIMBATORE: In an effort to mitigate human-elephant conflict, the government would soon extend elephant profiling to all the forest divisions across the state. Profiling involves noting the physical characteristics and assigning a name to a wild elephant to enable easy identification and tracking. Behavioural aspects too are compiled.
Elephant profiling tasks, which were carried out earlier only in Coimbatore and Nilgiris districts, was stopped due to administrative reasons. As part of reviving the project, a training programme was held in association with NGO Osai for forest range officers and foresters, at the Tamil Nadu Forest Academy in Coimbatore on Wednesday.
“We have commenced the training programme as part of the Thadam project under Tamil Nadu Biodiversity Conservation and Greening Project for Climate Change Response (TBGPCCR). Our primary aim is to understand the morphological features and behavioural characterisation between individual elephants and identify them using separate IDs, similar to the task being done for the individual tigers.
We have identified 105 conflict-prone villages and taken steps to address it by creating awareness and taking steps to address the human-elephant conflict scientifically.” said I Anwardeen, principal chief conservator of forests and chief project director of TBGPCCR.
“We are working out the standard operating procedures for farmers for warding off the wild animals in the forest boundaries,” he added.