Every year, August 12 is observed as World Elephant Day to draw focus towards conservation and protection of elephants across the world amid poaching, human-elephant conflict, mistreatment in captivity, and habitat loss.

World Elephant Day aims to accelerate efforts to offer better protection to elephants, improving enforcement policies, prevent the trade of ivory, illegal poaching, conserve elephant habitat, better captive environments for elephants, and reintroduce the captive elephants back in their natural sanctuaries.

In 2020, Former Union Environment Minister Prakash Javadekar had released the booklet on ‘Best practices of Human-Elephant Conflict Management in India’ and launched the national portal on human-elephant conflict known as ‘Surakshya’.

In 2021, Union Environment Minister Bhupender Yadav tweeted that India has a large population of wild Asian elephants. He will release the population estimation protocol for all-India elephant and tiger population estimation in 2022 on World Elephant Day.

World Elephant Day: History

•The Elephant Reintroduction Foundation of Thailand along with Canadian filmmaker Patricia Sims co-founded World Elephant Day on August 12, 2012.

•Since the inception of the day, the duo has partnered with 100 elephant conservation organizations across the world to create and support conservation solutions for elephants.

World Elephant Day: Significance

•Patricia Sims, one of the co-founders of the World Elephant Day said that this day calls out to people to offer support to organizations to aid in stopping illegal poaching and trading of elephant ivory and other wildlife products, provide sanctuaries for elephants to live freely.

•The International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) Red List of threatened species has listed African elephants as ‘Critically Endangered’ and Asian elephants as ‘Endangered’.

•As per the current assessment released by the IUCN Red List in 2020, the Asian elephant population over the last three generations has reduced by 50 per cent.

•During an assessment of African forest and savanna elephants as separate species by the IUCN in 2021, the number of African forest elephants was found to have fallen by more than 86 per cent over 31 years and the number of African Savanna elephants fell by at least 60 per cent over 50 years across the world.

•The current population estimation of Asian elephants ranges between 40,000 to 50,000 across the world. More than 60 per cent of wild Asian elephants have been recorded in India.

•In February 2020, the Conference of Parties of CMS 13 held at Gandhi Nagar, Gujarat, listed Indian elephants in Appendix I of the Convention of the Migratory species.

•The Government of India in 2010 declared elephants as the Natural Heritage Animal of India.

Project Elephant: What is it?

•The Government of India in 1992 had launched Project Elephant as a Centrally Sponsored Scheme to protect elephants and their habitats, address issues of human-elephant conflict, and ensure the welfare of captive elephants.

•The Ministry of Environment, Forest, and Climate Change provides funding for the project across the country.

•The project has been implemented in 16 states across India namely Andhra Pradesh, Arunachal Pradesh, Assam, Chhattisgarh, Jharkhand, Karnataka, Kerala, Maharashtra, Meghalaya, Nagaland, Orissa, Tamil Nadu, Tripura, Uttarakhand, Uttar Pradesh, and West Bengal.

Did you know?

•India has 32 Elephant reserves, as stated by the Government of India. The Singhbhum Elephant Reserve of Jharkhand was the first elephant sanctuary in the country.

•In 2011, the Ministry of Environment and Forests collaborated with Wildlife Trust of India to launch the campaign ‘Hathi Mere Sathi’.

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