A recent appeal by lobbyists for the resort and business owners in the Sigur plateau to reduce the extent of private lands demarcated as part of the notified Sigur elephant corridor has been criticised by experts and conservation biologists studying the movement of the animals in the region.
According to sources, the business owners want the current expanse of private lands, notified as part of the corridor measuring around 7,000 acres, to be reduced to encompass less than 10% of the current area.
Priya Davidar, a conservation biologist who has published several scientific papers on elephant corridors, said the Sigur corridor protects the contiguity of elephant habitats between the Eastern and Western Ghats. “It is important to preserve the passages between villages, and between villages and the mountain to allow the movement of elephants. This redundancy is necessary to protect connectivity. So it would be preposterous to reduce the existing passages to only one corridor of a few hundred meters width under the pretext that restored corridors are narrow,” said Ms. Davidar in a statement to The Hindu.
