Results from the All India Synchronized Elephant Population Estimation released by the Ministry of Environment, Forests and Climate Change on August 12 peg Kerala’s elephant numbers at 3,054, the third highest among the 23 States where elephants are found. Of the four elephant reserves in Kerala, the Anamudi elephant reserve has the highest elephant density at 0.41 elephants per sq km.
According to the seventh elephant census, elephants were found to occur in 37 forest divisions in the State, and distributed across 9,670 sq km. While the Wayanad and Nilambur elephant reserves have a density of 0.25 elephants per sq km, the Periyar elephant reserve supports 0.31 elephants per sq km.
While the State’s current elephant population of 3,054 is a significant decrease from the census estimates in 2012 (which estimated the then elephant population to be 6,117), parallels cannot be drawn between both numbers because the estimation methodologies are different, cautions the report.
The current census lists the total number of elephants in India at 27,312. Karnataka has the highest number of elephants at 6,049, followed by Assam (5,719).
The southern region, which includes Kerala, Andaman and Nicobar, Karnataka, Tamil Nadu, Maharashtra and Andhra Pradesh, has the highest number of elephants (11,960) among the four regions in India.
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