4 states conduct elephant census, population rise documented

Four states came together to coordinate with each other for a composite elephant census and study. The census came to an end on Friday at West Midnapore's Goaltore. On March this year, Bengal, Odisha, Chhattisgarh and Jharkhand decided to conduct a census from May 10 to 12.

The dates were deliberately chosen as the sighting of elephants was expected to be easier on the night of May 10, which was a full moon night. Elephant experts often say that these four states together have the maximum numbers of human-elephant conflict.

However, on the other hand, a sizable portion of the population here worships the elephant as a god. In a recent incident, at Goaltore's Dudhpathari, local villagers treated an ailing elephant which was suffering from dehydration.

"We undertook block counting, water hole and line transect dung count methods to count the number of elephants in the region. The data will be compiled in a specific format and sent to the Ministry of Environment, Forest and Climate Change for analysis," said Vijay Kumar Salimath, the Burdwan DFO.

Block sampling with direct counting method basically means taking samples from the selected block randomly across the entire division. In this method, for each division, approximately 50 per cent of the forest beat areas to be randomly chosen and to be demarcated as census block.

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