Field notes: Learning of and from the Kanha-Achanakmar Corridor

~ Pakhi Das

As part of the Coalition for Wildlife Corridors (CWC), some of my work at the NCCI is to create rich profiles of a few corridors for the tiger movement in central India. That said – I had never been to one until June this year when colleagues from WWF India and I travelled through the beautiful Sal forests in the Kanha - Achanakmar Corridor (KAC) in the Central Indian Landscape. The purpose of this field trip was to have those collating information and writing corridor profiles get a chance to co-write with the field teams and learn about ground realities from the varied stakeholders. While secondary research had been extremely useful in laying the foundation of the corridor profile, this trip would allow me to interact with experts who had been working on the ground in the corridor area for years and learn new information first-hand, making the profile robust, relevant, and up to date.
 

​The Boundaries That Wildlife Doesn’t Recognize
 
The KAC spans two forest divisions of Madhya Pradesh (East Mandla and Dindori) and three forest divisions of Chhattisgarh (Kawardha, Bilaspur and Mungeli). The corridor provides extensive habitats for various wild-animal species, including tigers, leopards, hyenas, jackals, and multiple species of deer. However, during the first nationwide lockdown due to the pandemic, herds of elephants also walked from Orrisa and Eastern Chattisgarh and found their home in the forests of this corridor. Tigers and elephants have always fascinated me, and though very slim, the possibility of sighting one or both during the trip was extremely exciting.

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