Elephant "Gaja Yatra" needs protection
India paid tribute to the Asian elephant, national and religious symbol in the Hindu culture, with a wide exposition in which the danger is remembered that these animals run when losing part of their habitat due to the expansion of the human settlements. The project, in collaboration with the NGO Wildlife Fund of India, was inaugurated in New Delhi on the occasion of World Elephant Day.
The exhibition is titled "Gaja Yatra", and was inaugurated by the Indian government this Sunday, with the aim of connecting roads between humans and this majestic pachyderm. the director of WTI, Vivek Menon, explained to international media that for Hindus the elephant is in fact a God who is prayed before starting something new, a trip, a job, to marry, always pray to the god called Ganesha to withdraw the obstacles of the road.
However, despite the fact that the elephant is considered a deity in the Asian country, Menon warned that the expansion of human settlements and communication lines such as roads or railways has caused the inevitable human-wildlife clash. According to WTI data, each year more than 400 people and a hundred proboscidia lose their lives due to the passage of elephants through inhabited areas in India, through whose territory 101 runners have been identified for these mammals.The organizers of the event decided to exhibit 101 sculptures of elephants in the gardens of the Indira Gandhi National Center for the Arts of the Indian capital, to remind the public of the existence of these corridors.
The sculptures are made with recycled materials and a wide range of colors. Each one of them original and unique, they became the most requested claim of the event, in which it was remembered that, of that hundred runners, only half of them, present in 11 Indian states, are safe for the pachyderms.
It is worth noting that India has a population of about 27,700 wild elephants, about half of the total number of pachyderms in Asia, while another 3,500 domesticated animals live in captivity. Those that are wild are scattered in about thirty reserves, which occupy some 65,000 square kilometers. More than half of the Indian states have pachyderms in freedom and the main colonies are in the south and northeast of the country.
