RAS question
Which organization has been the primary body mapping and documenting elephant corridors in India?
Correct answer: (D) Wildlife Trust of India (WTI) in collaboration with Project Elephant.
Wildlife Trust of India, working with Project Elephant, has been the key body associated with mapping and documenting elephant corridors in India through the Right of Passage reports.
Explanation
Wildlife Trust of India is the right choice because the official Project Elephant report records that, as a pan-India effort supported by Project Elephant, WTI produced Right of Passage: Elephant Corridors of India in 2005, giving a comprehensive view of elephant corridors across the four regional landscapes. The same report cites the 2017 Right of Passage volume by WTI and notes that corridor details for some states were drawn from the Gajah report and the 2017 Right of Passage. Project Elephant's 2023 exercise then ground-validated corridors with State Forest Departments, using elephant movement, forest cover, land-use and human-elephant conflict information for demarcation and monitoring.
Why the other options are wrong
- (A) The Central Zoo Authority is linked to zoo management, whereas the cited corridor work concerns landscape-level elephant movement and habitat connectivity.
- (B) IUCN appears only as a global conservation reference in the report, while the India-specific Right of Passage corridor documentation is attributed to WTI with Project Elephant support.
- (C) The National Tiger Conservation Authority is not the body identified in the source for elephant-corridor mapping; the cited institutional work is under Project Elephant, with WTI's Right of Passage reports.
Concept
This tests the Environment and Ecology theme of wildlife corridors and institutional responsibility in species conservation. RAS repeats such questions because elephant corridors connect habitat fragmentation, human-wildlife conflict and flagship conservation programmes.