Context: The Supreme Court on January 27 appointed conservationist Nandita Hazarika as Member of a Technical Committee constituted by it on October 14 last year.
Current Scenario

• The top court upheld the Tamil Nadu government’s authority to notify an ‘elephant corridor’ and protect the migratory path of the animals through the Nilgiri biosphere reserve.
• The reserve is the largest protected forest area in India, spanning across Tamil Nadu, Karnataka and Kerala.
• A three-judge Bench said it was the State’s duty to protect a “keystone species” such as elephants, immensely important to the environment.

Sigur plateau

• The corridor is situated in the ecologically fragile Sigur plateau, which connects the Western and the Eastern Ghats and sustains elephant populations and their genetic diversity.
• It has the Nilgiri Hills on its southwestern side and the Moyar River Valley on its north-eastern side.
• The elephants cross the plateau in search of food and water.
• Sigur Plateau (Segur Plateau) is a plateau in the north and east of Nilgiri District in the Nilgiri Hills of Tamil Nadu, South India.
• The Nilgiri Biosphere Reserve, which includes Sigur Plateau and the Nilgiri Hills, is part of the UNESCO World Network of Biosphere Reserves.

Additional Information

Nilgiris Elephant Corridor

• Elephant corridors allow elephants to continue their nomadic mode of survival. Despite the shrinking forest cover, the corridors facilitate the traveling of elephants between distinct forest habitats.
• Nilgiris elephant corridor is situated in the ecologically fragile Sigur plateau. The plateau connects the Western and the Eastern Ghats. Apart from that, the plateau also sustains elephant populations and their genetic diversity.
• It has the Nilgiri Hills on its southwestern side and the Moyar River Valley on its north-eastern side. The elephants cross the plateau in search of food and water.

Nilgiri Biosphere Reserve

• The Nilgiri Biosphere Reserve is the largest protected forest area in India. The Biosphere Reserve spread across three states. Namely, Tamil Nadu, Karnataka, and Kerala.
• The Nilgiri Sub-Cluster is a part of the Western Ghats which was declared a World Heritage Site by UNESCO in 2012.
• The reserve includes the Aralam, Mudumalai, Mukurthi, Nagarhole, Bandipur, and Silent Valley national parks. Similarly, the reserve also includes the Wayanad, Karimpuzha, and Sathyamangalam wildlife sanctuaries.
• It has the largest population of two endangered species, the lion-tailed macaque and Nilgiri tahr. The reserve hosts more than 400 tigers. Most importantly, the reserve is having more tigers than any other place on earth.
• About 80% of flowering plants reported from the Western Ghats occur in Nilgiri Biosphere Reserve.

What are Wildlife Corridors?

• A wildlife corridor, also called as green corridor, is an area of habitat connecting wildlife populations separated by human activities or structures (such as roads, development, or logging).
• This allows an exchange of individuals between populations, which may help prevent the ill-effects of inbreeding and reduced genetic diversity that often occur within isolated populations.

Purpose

• The goal of implementing habitat corridors is to increase biodiversity.

Corridors can contribute to three factors that stabilize a population

• Colonization: animals are able to move and occupy new areas when food sources or other natural resources are lacking in their core habitat.
• Migration: species that relocate seasonally can do so more safely and effectively when it does not interfere with human development barriers.
• Interbreeding: animals can find new mates in neighbouring regions so that genetic diversity can increase and thus have a positive impact on the overall population.

Elephant Corridor

• Elephant corridors are linear, narrow, natural habitat linkages that allow elephants to move between secure habitats without being disturbed by humans.
• The southernmost elephant populations of India range over the two principal mountain chains of southern India (the Western Ghats and a part of the Eastern Ghats) in the states of Kerala, Karnataka, Tamil Nadu and Andhra Pradesh.
• There are about eight populations within this range based on contiguity of habitats.

Advantages of Wildlife Corridors

• Help facilitate the re-establishment of populations that have been reduced or eliminated due to random events (such as fires or disease), thus mitigating threat of Habitat fragmentation
• Decreased likelihood of local species extinction and in-breeding
• Maintenance of species richness and diversity
• Lower incidence of disease