Suresh Chand addresses the workshop in Guwahati on Tuesday. Picture by Eastern Projections

Guwahati, Dec. 1: The Assam forest department has requested the Centre for funds to acquire private land in elephant corridors for better protection of their habitats.

This was disclosed today by Assam’s principal chief conservator of forests, Suresh Chand, at a workshop on Training of Trainers on Advancement of Elephant Heal-thcare and Managerial Practices.

The 11-day workshop is being supported by the centrally sponsored Project Elephant. The course has 20 participants, including local experts and resource persons from Germany, Indonesia, Singapore, the US, UK, and Nepal.

The workshop’s theory classes will be held here while practical classes will be held at the Assam State Zoo, Pobitora Wildlife Sanctuary, Kaziranga National Park and Orang National Park. The experts will medically check 70 elephants as part of the course.

Making a presentation on elephant conservation in Assam, Chand said there were nine notified elephant corridors at present but the department was notifying 11 more where elephants had been found moving in good numbers.

“We can protect elephants in other areas, too, but where is the money? It is for this that we have requested the Centre for help,” Chand said, adding that acquiring private land was an expensive affair.

He said the elephant population in Assam had been stable from 1993 but there had been a loss of prime elephant habitat and corridors. The population of elephant in Assam is 5,281 — 58 per cent of the gentle giants’ total population in the Northeast. There are five elephant reserves in Assam, covering 10,967 square km.

Chand said the department would not allow anybody to put up development projects in the elephant areas. It had stopped the Indian Oil Corporation (IOC) from setting up an oil terminal at Powai Golai in Tinsukia district, he added.

As part of the IOC project was in the forest area, the officials of Tinsukia forest division discussed the matter with the IOC officials. “I went to the area and discussed (the matter) with the IOC officials. They listened and excluded the forest area from the project,” Chand said.

He said elephants in Assam were not killed for trade on a largescale but retaliatory killing was a big problem.

He also said payment of compensation to the families of those killed by elephants was often delayed and crop insurance against elephant depredation had not been introduced till now despite interactions with several agencies. Assam pays Rs 40,000 compensation while states like Maharashtra pay upto Rs 2 lakh.

Earlier, K.K. Sarma, the course director of the programme, said there were not many veterinarians in the country who had reasonable expertise in elephant healthcare.

“Assam has the highest number of Asian elephants in captivity as well as in wilderness but nobody has taken the subject of elephantology with the seriousness it deserves. On the other hand, Kerala, with much less number of elephant wealth, has marched ahead and earned significant prominence in the field. We started 30 years behind Kerala but in the last 20 years we have covered a lot of ground and can now stand at par if not ahead of them,” he added.