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Journalism of Courage
A heartbreaking video of an elephant family trying to cross over the barriers alongside a railway track in Tamil Nadu’s Niligiris is going viral, once again triggering discussion over the need for wildlife corridors. As the video started doing rounds, the Railway Ministry took quick action to provide an easier route for the animals’ passage.
While mitigation fences along highways or railway tracks are designed to decrease accident probability and lessen animal-human clashes, in the video the elephants were seen struggling to reenter the nearby forest. The clip shared on Twitter by Indian Administrative Service (IAS) officer Supriya Sahu showed the calves and adults walking on the train line before they could safely climb over and cross the wall.
Luckily, there were no oncoming trains when the herd was crossing over, but the IAS officer couldn’t stop highlighting the potential threat of the barricades to animal movement. Dubbing the video “distressing”, Sahu added: “Need to have a mandatory SOP for all infra agencies towards sensitive wildlife friendly design & execution”.
Joining Sahu, many people expressed their anger and argued for better measures for animal movement such as building wildlife corridors also known as habitat corridors.
Later, Sahu shared an update to show how promptly wildlife forces and the railways joined hands to take action. In a second video posted by her, the walls by the tracks were seen being demolished. “When we work together we come out with solutions,” she wrote.
People on social media lauded the IAS officer for her efforts and thanked the Railways Ministry for taking prompt actions.
https://twitter.com/arumugavallal/status/1489216689258610690
https://twitter.com/tevarinkural/status/1489204082980298754
Amid rising instances of human-elephant conflict, the Union Ministry of Environment, Forests and Climate Change embarked on a massive project to identify and in the country in October 2021. The corridors could also be notified in order to give legal protection to the movement of elephants.
In a landmark decision in 2018, the Supreme ordered the closure of 27 resorts allegedly encroaching upon elephant corridors in the Nilgiris biosphere in Tamil Nadu. The court notified about an “elephant corridor” to protect the migratory path of the animals through the Nilgiris reserve, the largest protected forest area in India, spanning across Tamil Nadu, Karnataka and Kerala.
