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♤ Haathi Mere Saathi is a campaign launched by the Ministry of environment and forest (MoEF) in partnership with the wildlife trust of India (WTI).
♤ To improve conservation and welfare prospects of the elephant - India’s National Heritage Animal.
♤ The campaign was launched at the “Elephant- 8” Ministerial meeting held in Delhi on 24th May 2011.
♤ The E-8 countries comprise of India, Botswana, the Republic of Congo, Indonesia, Kenya, Srilanka, Tanzania, and Thailand.
♤ This public initiative was aimed at increasing awareness among people and developing friendship, companionship between people and elephants.
The campaign mascot ‘Gaju’.
♤ The campaign focuses on various target audience groups including locals near elephant habitats, youth, policy makers, among others.
♤ It envisions setting up of Gajah (the elephant) centres in elephant landscapes across the country to spread awareness on their plight and invoke people’s participation in addressing the threats to them.
♤ It also plants to build capacity of protection and law enforcement agencies at the ground level, and advocate for policies favouring the pachyderms (the elephant).
♤ Recommended by the elephant task force (ETF) constituted by the ministry last year, the campaign to “Take Gajah (the elephant) to the prajah (the people)” aims to spread awareness and encourage people’s participation in elephant conservation and welfare.
Tiger, faces threat of extinction, whereas the elephant faces threat of attrition. The elephant Nos. have not increased or decreased drastically but there is a increasing pressure on the elephant habitats and it is a serious concern which has to be addressed by involving people in elephant conservation and welfare through this campaign.
♤ The Asian elephant is threatened by habitat degradation, conflicts and poaching for ivory. These threats are more intense in India which harbours more than 50% of worlds Asian elephant population.
♤ India has about 25000 elephants in the wild. Despite this seemingly large number, the elephant particularly the tuskers (male), in India is as threatened as the tiger. There are just about 1200 tuskers left in the country.
Do you know?
The term “blind as a bat” isn’t really accurate. Bats have perfectly good eyes for seeing in the daylight. The problem is, they do most of their hunting at night!