Awareness meeting on man-elephant conflict held in Golaghat

A Correspondent

Numaligarh: Aaranyak, in collaboration with Golaghat district administration and District Forest Department, has come forward to organize awareness meetings for better management of wildlife, besides ensuring proper co-existence of human and wild elephants in a suitable environment. A special awareness meeting was held on Thursday in presence of district administration officials, district forest department officials, Aaranyak member-officials, police, village defense party, gaon burhas and tea garden authorities at the conference hall of Morangi development block office in Golaghat.

The meeting was presided over by Uttam Saikia, honorary wildlife warden of Golaghat district, and the welcome address and the purpose of the meeting was explained Niranjan Bhuyan, coordinator of Aaranyak, who said that the awareness meeting was aimed at educating the various stakeholders of local administration so that they could help the common people by informing them about protection of wildlife and mitigating the human-elephant conflict in the area.

Addressing the participants, Dr. Bibhuti Lahkar, the programme secretary of Aaranyak, and world heritage hero said that population growth of human and resettlement programmes had produced fatal clashes between humans and elephants. An optimal ecological unit for elephants is the mosaic of diverse vegetation types, which can offer good shelter, optimal food and required water, he said. In a visual presentation, he also showed various measures like beekeeping, optional crop cultivation, using trench and solar fencing in the affected areas which could be used for keeping away wild elephants from cropland and human-populated areas.

Retired NEHU Professor Dr. T. Peter of Eco Spiritual Missionary India, forest range officer Puspadhar Borgohain, Zoology professor and wildlife expert Rajiv Basumatary, nature-wildlife activist and journalist Rituraj Phukon were present and spoke on the various aspects related to human-elephant conflict and its possible mitigation measures. Various participants from VDP and gaon burhas also spoke about the issues and problems they were facing for mitigating the human-elephant conflict.

President of the meeting, Uttam Saikia, also addressed the participants and stated that there was a misconception among the people that the elephant population was rising day by day but the real picture was different. Due to the degradation of the forest lands, there is a scarcity of vegetation and habitat for the elephants in the forest, so they often come to human-populated areas searching for food.

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