Govt. devises plan to mitigate human-elephant conflict

DIMAPUR — The department of Environment, Forest and Climate Change has decided to make a comprehensive plan to mitigate human-elephant conflict with special reference to Wokha and other neighbouring districts.

This was announced by team of officials to the affected community in Wokha district during the field visit on September 19 and 20, stated a DIPR report. The team comprised of commissioner and secretary of Environment, Forest and Climate Change department, Y Kikheto Sema; PCCF and Chief Wildlife Warden, Vedpal Singh; PA to forest minister, Pangloi; DFO Wokha division, Suman WM Sivachar; Wildlife Warden Dimapur, Tokaho Kinimi; and representative from Wokha administration and police and GIS team.

It stated that the field visit was undertaken to take stock of the human-elephant conflict and meet the affected communities of the area.

On September 19, the officials visited Mekokla village and had a detailed interaction with the village elders and leaders, while on September 20, the team held a meeting with the representatives of Englan Range Village Council Unions at Doyang Hydro.

Report stated that the team also met representatives of Yanmhon Area Public Organisation and visited recent affected areas at Liphi and Hayiyan villages. It added that the GIS team had taken drone images of the affected areas to collect additional data from such areas.

Besides, the team held a detailed interaction with the affected villages, community elders of more than 20 villages from Sanis and Bhandari sub-division in presence of Lotha Hoho at Bhandari town community hall.

Speaking in the meeting, Kikheto highlighted that the population of elephants in the world is 5 lakh plus and India has an elephant population of around 30,000 with more than 10,000 in Northeast region. According to him, Assam has the maximum numbers of elephants in the Northeast region with more than 5,700, Meghalaya with 1,754, Arunachal with 1,614 and Nagaland with 446.

He informed that Intangki National Park in Peren has a higher population of elephants followed by Wokha, Mon and adjoining districts of Mokokchung, Zunheboto and Longleng.

While acknowledging the problems of the affected people due to the presence of elephants in their area, Kikheto stated that all animals are also creation of God and that humans should try to co-exist with them.

Kikheto informed the community elders and leaders that the department would work out a policy and strategy so that people could co-exist with wild animals. Also highlighting the difficulties faced by the department, he informed that the department would review the manpower and resources with logistics to ensure that the Forest staff are well trained and equipped to tackle any emergency.

Kikheto also informed that the department had recently posted one assistant conservator of forest (ACF) to Baghty forest range. He has assured to deploy staff from other divisions in order to fill the shortage of staff.

Kikheto has appealed to the community leaders to share their problems and experiences so that they could formulate strategy and action plans to reduce the man-elephant conflicts.

With regard to compensation related applications, he assured that the applications would be forwarded to appropriate authorities for consideration. He further added that the department would work out a comprehensive plan to mitigate human-elephant conflict in the state with special reference to Wokha and other neighbouring districts.

NRSU urges dept. to prepare SOP

The Nyiro Range Students’ Union (NRSU) stated that herds of wild elephants are being sighted at Nrung Longidang, Longla, Niroyo.

In this regard, the union has appealed to the department to prepare standard operation procedures (SOP) and mitigation strategies to address the problem proactively to avoid human-animal causalities. The union also appealed to the department to send experts and staff to study the reality and take ground reports which is hampering the farming community under Nyiro.

The union further stated that the marauding elephants have not only pose a grave threat to the life of humans but causing a great damage to their paddy field and plantations. It claimed that paddy fields were destroyed and field huts flattened to the ground in Niroyo and Nrung Longidang in the past few days.

Also read: Nagaland government’s intervention sought to tackle elephant menace in Wokha