A. Human-Elephant Conflict (HEC) & Mitigation Strategies

• Inter-State Coordination: Elephants are wide-ranging landscape species that do not conform to administrative boundaries. Disjointed forest patches between Odisha, Jharkhand, West Bengal, Chhattisgarh, and Andhra Pradesh make interstate coordination vital for unimpeded passage along traditional corridors.
• Kumki Elephants: Captive, trained Asiatic elephants used by forest departments to track, patrol, capture, or herd wild herds back into core forests, minimizing retaliatory killings and crop depredation.
• Elephant Corridors & Project Elephant: Securing and notifying linear habitat strips connecting larger protected areas is an ecological imperative under Project Elephant (launched in 1992) to maintain genetic flow and avoid population isolation.
• Non-Poaching Causes of Mortality: Electrocution (sagging high-tension wires), train hits, open irrigation wells, and retaliatory poisoning represent major anthropogenic threats beyond ivory poaching.

B. Wildlife Crime, Trafficking & Exotics

• Special Task Force (STF) & CITES Enforcement: The inquiry into orangutan smuggling brings attention to illicit international wildlife trafficking.

C. Ecotourism vs. Conservation Balance

• Identified Hubs: Chandaka (elephant haven), Similipal (Tiger Reserve & Biosphere Reserve), Deomali (highest peak of Odisha), and Mahendragiri (Eastern Ghats biodiversity hotspot).
• Ecological Safeguards: While adventure and eco-tourism generate local livelihoods and forest awareness, unmanaged tourist influx poses risks of habitat fragmentation, plastic pollution, and disturbance to wildlife corridors. Projects must strictly adhere to the Guidelines for Sustainable Ecotourism in Forest and Wildlife Areas.

• PCCF (Principal Chief Conservator of Forests) & CWLW (Chief Wildlife Warden): The statutory authority under Section 4 of the Wildlife (Protection) Act, 1972, empowered to permit entry, translocation, capturing, or managing problem animals in wildlife areas.

Conservation Status:

Asian Elephant (Elephas maximus):

• IUCN: Endangered
• WPA 1972: Schedule I
• CITES: Appendix I.

• Similipal: Mayurbhanj district; UNESCO World Network of Biosphere Reserves; famous for melanistic tigers.
• Deomali: Koraput district; highest peak in Odisha (Eastern Ghats).
• Mahendragiri: Gajapati district; proposed Biosphere Reserve in the Eastern Ghats

Human-elephant conflict, Project Elephant, wildlife statutes such as the Wildlife (Protection) Act, 1972, and conservation status listings are recurring themes across OPSC Prelims (Environment & Ecology) and OPSC Mains GS Paper III, especially for Odisha’s protected areas.

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