KAZIRANGA: Project Elephant, under the aegis of the Ministry of Environment, Forest and Climate Change (MoEFCC), has been conducting synchronized elephant population estimation across all elephant-bearing states of India every five years. The current cycle is for the year 2023-24. As part of this initiative, Training of Trainers (ToT) programme was organized at Kaziranga National Park & Tiger Reserve, where over seventy frontline forest personnel from twenty-eight divisions from Assam, Arunachal Pradesh, Manipur and Nagaland received training. The training focused on key aspects such as sampling elephant encounter rates, determining group composition, and collecting dung samples for faecal DNA analysis.
For the 2023-24 estimation, the methodology will be based on covariate-based Spatially Explicit Capture-Recapture (SECR) modeling, using DNA from dung samples to individually identify elephants. This approach mirrors the methodology successfully employed in the national-level tiger and leopard estimations, ensuring a robust, scientific basis for accurate population estimates.
The resource persons for the training were a team from the Wildlife Institute of India, including Dr. Bhim Singh, Shravana Goswami, Krishna Mishra, Manish Singanjude, and Harshvardhan Singh Rathore. The trainees were familiarized with MSTrIPES polygon application that allows the user to record geo-referenced field observations and seamless data archiving to ensure minimal error in sampling, stated a press release.
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