DULUNG SUBANSIRI ELEPHANT CORRIDOR – ENVIRONMENT
News:
Ready proposal to
demarcate Dulung-Subansiri elephant corridor, Union environment ministry tells
Arunachal, Assam
What's
in the news?
●
The wildlife division of the Union
Ministry of Environment, Forest and Climate Change (MoEFCC) recently directed
the forest departments of Arunachal
Pradesh and Assam to prepare a proposal to notify the Dulung-Subansiri
elephant corridor.
Key
takeaways:
●
The corridor will facilitate the east-west
movement of elephants across the Subansiri
River.
Elephant
Corridors:
●
Elephant corridors are linear, narrow,
natural habitat linkages that allow elephants to move between secure habitats
without being disturbed by humans.
●
They help animal movement and enable genetic exchange which in turn helps in
sustaining the elephant population.
●
West
Bengal has the most elephant corridors.
International
Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN)
Red
List of threatened Species:
●
African
Forest Elephant - Critically Endangered.
●
African
Savanna Elephant - Endangered.
●
Asian
Elephant - Endangered.
●
Elephants come under Schedule I of The Wildlife Protection Act,1972.
Go
back to basics:
Lower
Subansiri hydro-project:
●
The 2000 MW Lower Subansiri hydro-project,
executed by the National Hydroelectric Power Corporation (NHPC), is located in
the Kamle and Dhemaji districts of Arunachal Pradesh and Assam, respectively.
●
It is being constructed on the Subansiri
River, a tributary of the Brahmaputra River.
Subansiri
River:
●
It is a trans-Himalayan River and a
tributary of the Brahmaputra River that flows through Tibet’s Lhuntse County in
the Shannan Prefecture and the Indian states of Arunachal Pradesh and Assam.
●
It is the largest tributary of the Brahmaputra contributing 7.92% of the
Brahmaputra’s total flow.
●
Small tributaries of the Subansiri include
Rangandi, Dikrong and Kamle.