Conflict connotes - a struggle, fight, a clash of interest etc. Man being an apex species has a vast array of natural resources at his command and control. His over dependence on the depleting natural resources has led to inter and intra specific competition and impairment of the delicate balance of demand and supply. The obvious result is the alarming situation of Human-Animal Conflict which is more pronounced in case of wild elephants. Not a single day passes without a report in the newspapers about Man-Animal Conflict and Human Elephant Conflict (HEC).
The coexistence of Man and Elephants dates back to over 4000 years (Prachi Mehta, 2011). India has about 28,000 wild elephants (Report of Elephant Task Force, 2012) and Karnataka has about 6200 elephants-which is about 20% of the country's Census-2012). The Government of India in the year 1992-93 initiated the Project Elephant to conserve the declining elephant population. On the directions of GOI, the Government of Karnataka notified the Mysore elephant Reserve (MER) on 25-11-2002 with an area of 6724.87 km2 spanning over six districts of the state.
Notification of the MER was a major initiative in conservation and management of elephant populations in the state. In the wild, there are two kinds of elephants viz. the African Elephants (Loxodonta africana) and the Asian Elephants (Elephas maximus). The African elephant has an estimated population of 4-6 lakhs and is placed under the "Near Threatened" category by the IUCN and Appendix-I of the CITES. The Asian elephant has a smaller population of 35,000-50,000 (Perera, 2009) and is placed under "Endangered" category by the IUCN and Appendix-I of CITES.
(Source: This is an excerpt taken from the My forest Journal - December 2013, Vol 49 (4). The author is Mr. Uday Kumar, IFS. You can read the article at https://bit.ly/2P0jZjM , page 28)
