Help Save Elephants in India

Dear donor,

Hope you are doing well and keeping safe.

Today’s updates are from the Wayanad region of the Western Ghats landscape. The Western Ghats hill ranges are a global biodiversity hotspot, and their positioning makes them a treasure house of biodiversity. The region particularly supports large elephant populations – approximately 30% of the world’s Asian elephant population live in this Western Ghats landscape.

Given the criticality of the landscape, Wildlife Trust of India has been working with communities on securing Right of Passage for Asian elephants in Wayanad for more than a decade. This quarter, we helped with capacity building of the frontline forest staff working within Protected Areas in Wayanad region and the local community. Frontline forest staff ae well as the communities living around forests are one of the most important stakeholders when it comes to conserving wildlife and guarding the Protect Areas. And so, training and capacity building is a great value add to their overall skillset. We conducted four workshops for the community living near forest habitats and frontline forest staff in Wayanad. Two workshops were on the importance of elephant corridors, one on forest fire awareness and precautions, and another workshop was conducted on Disaster management and Man-Animal conflict.       

Apart from the training sessions, field kits were distributed to the forest staff including the temporary frontline watchers who are actively engaged in ensuring safe passage to elephants as well as caution humans, when elephants travel through human habitations.  

Thanks to your generous support, we were able to continue our work on conserving elephants and their habitats in this part of the Western Ghats landscape. We will keep sharing similar updates with you, till then take care and stay safe.

Warm Regards,

Team WTI