Madras High Court gives Tamil Nadu three months to identify more elephant corridors

CHENNAI: The Madras High Court has granted the Tamil Nadu government three months to identify areas that require notification as elephant corridors, after the state informed the court that three corridors had already been notified.

S Muralidharan had filed a petition seeking the identification and notification of elephant corridors across Tamil Nadu. When the matter came up before a division bench of Justice N Sathish Kumar and Justice K Rajasekar, the Principal Chief Conservator of Forests and Chief Wildlife Warden filed a status report.

According to the report, the Environment, Climate Change and Forests Department notified three elephant corridors on August 27. They are the Jawalagiri-Thaggatti Elephant Corridor, Jawalagiri-Anchetty Elephant Corridor and Bilikkal-Jawalagiri Elephant Corridor.

Venuprasad, IFS, Principal Chief Conservator of Forests and chairman of the committee constituted for the purpose, submitted that the Wildlife Trust of India had originally identified 17 elephant corridors, while a committee constituted by the state government had identified 41 corridors.

He said a study was under way to determine whether all the identified areas needed to be notified as elephant corridors. The study included detailed assessment and field inspections to ascertain the requirement for notifying the areas as corridors.

Seeking more time to complete the exercise and submit a comprehensive report, Venuprasad said the assessment was still in progress. The bench granted the state a further three months to identify the areas requiring notification and adjourned the matter to December 14.