World Elephant Day at Indira Paryavaran Bhawan, New Delhi - August 2020

World Elephant Day is an international annual event, dedicated to the preser­vation and protection of the world’s elephants. The goal of World Elephant Day is to create awareness on elephant conservation, and to share knowledge and positive solutions for the better protection and management of wild and captive elephants.

This year, the World Ele­phant day was celebrated by Project Elephant Divi­sion and Elephant cell of WII at Indira Paryavaran Bhawan, New Delhi. The programme involved releasing the booklet on “Best practices of Hu­man-Elephant Conflict Management in India” and the launch of the beta version of the National Portal management of human elephant conflict called “Surakhsya” for col­lection of real time infor­mation & also for man­aging the conflicts on a real time basis. A video on measures for encouraging human – elephant co-ex­istence through HEC mit­igative approaches was also screened.

The was held in the august presence of Shri Prakash Javadekar, Hon’ble Minis­ter EF&CC, Shri Babul Su­priyo, Hon’ble MoS, EF&CC, Dr. Sanjay Kumar, DGF&SS, MoEF&CC; Shri Soumitra Dasgupta, ADG (Wildlife), Shri Noyal Thomas, IGF & Director Project Elephant, MoEF&CC and other senior officers of MoEF&CC. The State Forest Departments, WII and other stake holder organizations joined the celebrations on the virtual mode. Shri Prakash Javadekar Hon’ble Minister, EF&CC emphasized on co-existence of people with elephants and the efforts taken by the government to augment food and water availability to wild animals in forests. He also stressed on the use of technology and urged scientists and policy makers to implement out of box ideas to mitigate HEC. Shri Babul Supriyo, Hon’ble Minister of State, EF&CC raised concern over the death of humans and elephants that die every year due to increasing HEC and the efforts taken by the Ministry and State FDs to address the situation.He echoed the need of people and elephants to co-exist which blends well with the theme of the World Elephant Day 2020, “Living with elephants” and urged people to pledge to come together in protecting our National Heritage Animal for our future generations.