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Item Capacity building initiative on the dispersal and ranging patterns of elephants for effective management of human-elephant interactions(Wildlife Institute of India, Dehradun, 2022) Nigam, P.; Pandav, B.; Mondol, S.; Lakshmiarayanan, N.; Kumar, A.; Nandwanshi, V.B.; Das, J.; Biswas, S.; Udhayaraj, A.D.; Vishwakarma, R.; Habib, B.; Miachieo, K.; Narasingh Rao, P.V.Wild Asian elephant (Elephas maximus) populations are distributed in four major regions namely North West, North-East, East-Central and Southern regional meta-populations across India. Amongst them, the East-central regional population spread across the States of Odisha, Jharkhand, southern West Bengal, Chhattisgarh, and lately in Madhya Pradesh suffers disproportionately high levels of human elephant conflict. Among the myriad challenges facing management of human-elephant conflict in the region, elephant range expansion into new areas is overriding. One such range expansion that resulted in acute human-elephant conflict is being witnessed in the State of Chhattisgarh. Although northern Chhattisgarh was historically an elephant range, elephants reportedly disappeared during the period 1920 to late 1980s. While episodes of sporadic elephant occurrence in Chhattisgarh was reported during the period 1988- 1993, contemporary range expansion and concomitant human-elephant conflict began from the year 2000, and has accelerated during the last one decade. Faced with an enormous challenge of managing human-elephant conflict that is spatiotemporally dynamic unlike that of other elephant range States, constrained by limited Institutional capacities to assess and deal with the issue. Chhattisgarh Forest Department has been trying diversity its conflict mitigation strategies. Recognizing the need to objectively evaluate human-elephant conflict situation in the State, during the year 2017 Chhattisgarh Forest Department invited Wildlife Institute of India to conduct ecological research on elephants in Chhattisgarh with a three-year budget outlay. The project was a collaborative effort between Chhattisgarh Forest Department and WII. Considering the scope of the project, the project duration was further extended and eventually, the project lasted for the period July 2017 to March 2022. Being the final project report, the activities carried out as part of the project is summarized as under. Distribution and Demography In Chhattisgarh, the elephant distribution during the period 2012 to 2017 was reported from 16 Forest Divisions and four Protected Areas in the north and north-central regions of the state. The elephant population, as enumerated by Chhattisgarh Forest Department during 2021 , ranged from 250 to 300. The adult sex ratio recorded during the study was 1: 4.5. About 44% of the female segment of the population comprised of adults. Chhattisgarh elephant population is presently contiguous with other elephant populations in the neighboring states i.e., Madhya Pradesh, Jharkhand and in Odisha occurring as a meta-population 1 and thus cannot be considered as an isolated population. However, within Chhattisgarh, the population is relatively small and it occurs scattered over a large area as small and disjunctive groups facing a perpetual risk of getting isolated by ongoing linear infrastructure and other associated developmental activities in the State. If such groups get isolated, then they will not be viable in the long run. 1 Meta-population: Population of small populations that are connected through dispersals 1 O. ~ . -~ 1 -WU.d.U.fe .In.s-titu-te. o.f .In.di a Home Range, Movement Patterns & Dispersal, and Habitat Selection by Elephants During the period 2018-2022, WII-CGFD collaborative effort resulted in 10 elephant radio collaring in Chhattisgarh. The resultant effort provided 3106 elephant days of tracking information. Each of the radiocollared elephants provided an average of 310.6 (± 273) days of tracking data. As on 31 51 March 2022 when WII-CGFD collaborative project ended, two of the collared elephants (SD - Sehradev and MT - Maitri) were having functional collars. The estimated average home range (95% minimum convex polygon) of elephants in Chhattisgarh was 3172.8 km2 (± 2002.2 km2, Range: 462.3 - 6969.7 km2). The 95% kernel density home ranges of elephants were much lower averaging 512.3 km2 (± 235.3 km2, Range: 126.5 - 748.9 km2). The elephant home ranges were not wholly well defined, and marked by inter-annual shifts caused by exploratory behaviour. The elephant home ranges were relatively large. The dry season home ranges were significantly lower than monsoon and winter ranges. However, dry season home ranges of elephants are larger. The present study indicates that habitat quality in some of the forest patches - particularly those that are large and contiguous with minimal of human interference can potentially support elephants in the landscape. Thus, dry season ranges of elephants could serve as a surrogate for habitat quality. Monthly variations in home ranges were significant, and best explained by idiosyncrasies of individual elephants. Among the forest types open, moderately dense and very dense forests classified by Forest Survey of India based on crown densities, elephants selected open forests, that were predominantly juxtaposed with human-use areas. Although the crown density was low, the patches of open forests support dense stands of Sal (Shorea robusta) coppice with rank undergrowth offering adequate cover for elephants. Elephant habitat selection of these open forest patches appears to be influenced by potential foraging opportunities in human-use areas, and further facilitated by low inter-patch distance. Genetic Structure of Elephants Using 258 genetic samples collected from 9 Forest Divisions, elephant genetic structure in northern Chhattisgarh was evaluated. Analysis indicates that at least two different elephant lineages occur in Chhattisgarh. This implies that elephants occurring in Chhattisgarh have possibly come from different areas. Within the two different lineages, high relatedness amongst the individuals was observed corroborating with the general social structure of Asian elephant clans where individuals are mostly related. Crop Losses and Human Fatalities due to Elephants Crop losses caused by elephants were acute and widespread in Chhattisgarh. To draw an analogy, Karnataka's ex gratia payment towards crop losses by elephants during the period 2015-2020 was comparable with Chhattisgarh, although the former's elephant population is 93% more than the latter. The landscape-level assessment covering the whole of northern Chhattisgarh, and fine-scale assessment covering select areas in Surguja circle identified correlates of crop losses at both spatial scales. Elephant-related human deaths were widespread in the state. However, nearly 70% of incidences occurred in areas of high intensity of habitat-use by elephants. The human fatalities due to elephants were both temporally and spatially auto-correlated. 2Item Ecology and Management of swamp deer (Cervus duvauceli duvauceli) in Dudhwa Tiger Reserve, U.P. India(Wildlife Institute of India, Dehradun, 1995) Qureshi, Q.; Sawarkar, V.B.; Mathur, P.K.Item Ecology of black kites Milvus migrans subsisting on urban resources in Delhi: Black kite Project Phase - III(Wildlife Institute of India, Dehradun, 2008) Kumar, N.; Gupta, U.; Malhotra, H.; Jhala, Y.V.; Sergio, F.; Gosler, A.; Qureshi, Q.The research team working in the National Capital territory, since December 2012, and through major funding support from the Raptor Research and Conservation Foundation (RRCF), envisioned a long collaborative term study around the urban adaptations of a large raptor, the Black Kite Milvus migrans. Supervised since its inception by Profs. Y. V. Jhala and Q. Qureshi from the Wildlife Institute of India, and Dr. F. Sergio of CSIC, Spain, this project is a unique attempt in the Sub-Continent to holistically unravel the adaptations around Black Kite’s densest urban settlement in the world. We have now established how human cultural practices and attitudes may well be the most defining dimensions of the urban niche of synanthropes like Black Kites (Kumar et al. 2018). Thus, the third phase (August 2016 – July 2018), was a comprehensive assessment of the breeding ecology of Black kites, and their aggressive interaction with residents along the sampled urban gradient within the megacity of Delhi. For this, we used the habitat selection criteria of kites (Kumar et al. 2018) and inspected the behaviour of breeding kites at 101 territories (total 657 visitations), and tested their offspring defence (Kumar et al. in review). We found that defence increases with proximity to ritual-feeding sites and availability of offal, apart from progression in the breeding stage. This period also included the beginning of Phase -IV, an attempt to understand the migration of the Milvus migrans lineatus, the subspecies from the Central Asian Steppes wintering in the urban quarters of the Subcontinent from September to April every year. We deployed 13 GSM e-obs tags and 5 GSM tags from Microwave Telemetry Ltd. USA. These efforts were preceded by Phase-I of the project (December 2012 – June 2014) that focused on basic natural history observations (Kumar et al. 2014), and the Phase-II (July 2014 – July 2016) which further extended the efforts to cover more sampling units, focusing on the aspects of habitat, behaviour and population ecology. The project has now entered its intensive publication stage, as substantial data have now accumulated to enable high-level publications on international scientific outlets, with three publications lined up and ready to enter the genetic and disease components, apart from movement ecology. Finally, the project has incorporated through these initial years: (1) a remarkable amount of environmental education of Delhi citizens; (2) the Master thesis and near -completion of a PhD thesis by N. Kumar at an institute of repute (Oxford University, Department of Zoology, Edward Grey Institute of Ornithology); (3) completion of a Master program by U. Gupta at the Department of Geography of Oxford University; (4) training of more than 100 volunteers and some of them joining institutes of national and international reputation. All in all, the overall research team is extremely satisfied of all the progress and research formation attained and eager to move on to expand and intensify the project even more.