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KOLKATA: A country-wide elephant census has pegged the number of pachyderms in the country at 27,000, of which 514 roam the forests of north Bengal. According to experts, this is the first reliable count of elephants in the wild as the exercise was carried out in a synchronised manner to eliminate the possibility of double-counting.
In 2012, the countrywide count was between 29,000 and 30,000, but there was much double-counting as the jumbos moved from one state to another.
The latest figures will be released in New Delhi on August 12, World Elephant Day, Project Elephant director R K Srivasta va said. The count for south Bengal, however, has been left out as the sample size was too low to be collated.
Under the new census format, north Bengal was clubbed with the northeast, where the exercise was carried out simultaneously in all regions over three days in March.
However, only 30 elephants were counted in the south Bengal sampling blocks, which was too low a sample size for estimation of the total number. “We will have to depend on dung density transect method to calculate the density of jumbos in south Bengal,” said a researcher of the Bangalore-based Asian Nature Conservation Foundation of the Indian Institute of Science.
Bengal’s chief wildlife warden, R K Sinha, said roughly 150 elephants roam the districts of south Bengal.”But they are migratory animals and can move to other regions like Odisha and Jharkhand any time,” he said. Echoing his view, elephant expert Raman Sukumar said: “Our focus this time is on population distribution and range of wild elephants in India. We also want to find out distribution pattern of adult males, females and juveniles in herds. Minor changes in the overall number, be it a rise or fall, doesn’t matter much.”
In the 2014 exercise, the Bengal number was pegged at over 645, including 590+ in north Bengal and 55+ in south Bengal.
Methods like block counts, dung density transects and elephant population structure methods were used this year. In block counts, areas of four to five square kilometres in the forests were selected and elephant numbers were noted down based on direct sightings. In dung density transect, the scientists will estimate the density of dung piles using line transect method and then use the density to estimate elephant densities.