Wildlife experts stress on need for green structures .

Eco-engineering and wildlife experts have stressed on the need for green structures and preventing habitat loss to allow wild animals, especially elephants to travel through wildlife corridors. This is vital to mitigate the damage caused to wildlife and environment by habitat fragmentation and also to lessen the rising human-wildlife conflict in the Terai region of Uttarakhand.

These views emerged at the international conference on eco engineering for connecting wildlife corridors organised in Dehradun on Sunday by Tiger Protection Group and Wildlife Savers Society in association with Uttarakhand forest department.

Speaking as the chief guest of the event, the Vidhan Sabha Speaker Harbans Kapur said that the growing conflict between humans and elephants in the State is a cause for serious concern. Expressing hope that the conference would come up with important recommendations for addressing this problem, he said that the State Government would follow these recommendations while stressing that the State and Central Governments need to work together with all stakeholders to resolve this issue.

Professor and Chair of the Centre for Ecological Sciences, Indian Institute of Science, Raman Sukumar said, “About 400 people die annually in India due to human-animal conflict. Habitat fragmentation and degradation is a major cause of this conflict which can be mitigated by enabling unrestricted movement of elephants and other wild animals in wildlife corridors. However, various factors like the bio diversity of forest areas linked by a corridor and the size of the area have to be considered while taking measures for consolidating such corridors.”