ELEPHANT
DEATH AUDIT FRAMEWORK - ENVIRONMENT
News: Tamil Nadu introduces elephant death audit framework
What's
in the news?
●
Tamil
Nadu’s Forest Department has introduced an elephant death
audit framework to put in place a more detailed and transparent process for
recording and monitoring elephant deaths in the State.
● The broad objectives of Elephant Death Audit Framework (EDAF), the first-of-its-kind initiative in the country, are threefold, said Supriya Sahu, Additional Chief Secretary, Environment, Climate Change and Forests.
Elephant
death audit framework:
●
It prescribes a systematic standard protocol for conducting post-mortem to
determine the reasons for death of an elephant.
●
It will help to study the circumstances of
preventable and unnatural deaths and formulate measures to prevent them.
●
The framework protocol will be applicable
all over Tamil Nadu for the death of elephants in the wild.
● It has to be uniformly followed in all wildlife areas and territorial divisions.
Elephant
death audit stages:
●
Stage
1:
FIR - Reporting of elephant deathm
●
Stage
2:
Site Information Report - Area perambulation and external examination.
●
Stage
3:
Postmortem Interim Report - Conducting post-mortem and disposal of carcass.
●
Stage
4:
Management Intervention Report - Formulation of preventive measures based on
outcome results.
● Stage 5: Periodic Death Audit Report - Preparation of periodical audit reports for further follow-up action.
Need
of elephant death audit framework:
●
To track the mortality causes for Asian
Elephants.
● While poaching rates have come down drastically in the last few decades, there remains a lack of clarity on natural vs unnatural deaths of elephants, and how this is affecting the population in the long term.
Significance:
●
According to the framework, identifying the cause of mortality
remains a critical foundation for many questions related to population and
conservation ecology.
●
This framework will greatly improve
transparency, assist all stake-holders
in assessing the results, and facilitate standardisation and more credible
comparisons of the cause of mortality.
●
The framework will also be helpful in
collecting mortality assessment data
with high quality and credibility through a transparent process.
●
The framework and the procedural steps are
expected to assist wildlife managers and ecologists in ensuring accountability.
Go
back to basics:
Asian
Elephant:
●
It is distributed throughout the Indian subcontinent and Southeast Asia,
from India in the west, Nepal in the north, Sumatra in the south, and to Borneo
in the east.
●
Elephants are keystone species.
● The Asian elephant is the largest living land animal in Asia.
Habitat:
●
In India, the Asian elephant is found in
four fragmented populations, in the south, north, central and north-east of
India.
● Their habitat ranges from wet tropical evergreen forests to semi-arid thorn and scrub forests. However, the highest densities of the elephant population are found in tropical deciduous forests.
Significance:
● Asian elephants are extremely sociable, forming groups of six to seven related females that are led by the oldest female, the matriarch.
Subspecies:
There are three
subspecies of Asian elephants such as
●
Indian
●
Sumatran
and
●
Sri
Lankan.
● The Indian has the widest range and accounts for the majority of the remaining elephants on the continent.
India’s
Initiatives for Conservation of Elephants:
●
Gaj
Yatra: A nationwide campaign to protect elephants, was
launched on the occasion of World Elephant Day in 2017.
● Project Elephant: It is a centrally sponsored scheme which was launched in 1992.