An elephant spotted near Brajabiharipur on the outskirts of Cuttack on Friday. Picture by Badrika Nath Das

Bhubaneswar, Feb. 22: The state government today signed an MoU with a Bangalore-based non-profit public charitable trust to conduct a study to assess the carrying capacity for elephants in the state.

The accord was signed with the Asian Nature Conservation Foundation, the trust, which is actively involved in conservation of the Asian elephant, in presence of state’s forest and environment minister Bijoyshree Routray at the state secretariat.

“It’s essential to study the quality of habitat of the elephants and carrying capacity of forests, which are housing them,” said Routray.

The state has now 1,930 elephants, according to the 2012 census, said a forest official.

A senior official of the state forest department said the habitat of the elephants was under threat, forcing the pachyderms to leave their habitats and enter human habitations, and thereby, leading to man-animal conflict. The depredation of elephants results in their death as well as loss of life and property of human beings.

He said the state government had initiated several measures for elephant conservation. The government had declared three elephant reserves — Mayurbhanj, Samabalpur and Mahanadi. Seventy-five per cent of the elephants are found in the three reserves. Besides, the state government has prepared an elephant management plan and sent it to the central government, said the official.

The study, to be conducted at an estimated cost of Rs 49.51 lakh, will be over within a period of two-and-a-half years.

The findings of the study will provide inputs for management of elephant habitats as well as corridors and carrying capacity of the state forests. Besides, it will be helpful for creation of database.

In 2004, the foundation had conducted a study on the population status, conservation and management of Asian elephants in the state.

The state government had also signed another MoU with the Wildlife Trust of India last year to develop a mitigation plan to check the growing elephant casualties due to rail accidents.