Chennai: A first of its kind scientific album for Asiatic elephants is getting ready in Tamil Nadu. The album will profile photos of jumbos when they were calves and then follow them through their adolescence with more images.
The novel project will help foresters create a database of jumbos similar to that of tigers with their unique stripes.
For a start, the Tamil Nadu Forest department has begun the photo-profiling project for all wild elephants in Nilgiris.
Pictures captured through camera traps and by foresters with cameras will be used for the project. The elephants will get new IDs, wildlife sources said. They said that top forest officials in Chennai gave the project permission to go ahead recently.
“The project - a brainchild of Worldwide Fund For Nature – India (WWF) and TN Forest department - has completed field trials. The paper work started two years ago and thus far 45 elephants have been fully profiled using their photographs”, said WWF consultant N. Mohanraj working in the Nilgiris.
As many as 42 samples of tuskers and three makhnas are ready and in another six months the photo album will be available with more live samples. The focus is currently on tuskers due to their dwindling sex ratio. Identification of elephants is easy with photo images. The patterns of the ear lobe, ear folds, skin, shape and size of the ear, tusk and the skull are unique features of each pachyderm, explains Mohanraj.
According to a forest range officer, Mr Ajay Desai, wildlife conservationist and elephant expert, had been roped in for the project to provide expertise. Like tigers are called T 1, T 2 and T 3 using camera trap images, elephants will be called E 1, E 2, E 3 and so on. Of course, the local anti poaching watchers and tribals also do give names to the animals and these pet names will also be incorporated into the albums, the ranger added.
