- The Union Ministry of Environment, Forest and Climate Change (MOEFCC) has launched a project for undertaking ‘immunocontraceptive measures’ for population management of four species of wild animals — elephant, wild boar, monkey and blue bull (Nilgai).
- According to the MOEFCC, the Finance Ministry has given approval for it.
- The pilot project will be launched in Uttarakhand and then implemented in rest of the country.
- The only problem is to implement it on elephant as there is a court injunction.
- The immunocontraception is a technology that uses a female animal’s immune system to build a protein around the egg that prevents it from fertilising.
- The project is being launched keeping human-conflict in mind. According to reply tabled in Parliament on June 28, 2019, nearly 494 persons were killed by elephants last year alone. Between 2014 and March 2019, 2,398 people died in elephant attack in the country, with West Bengal accounting for maximum number of such deaths .
- Such system has tried in Africa in areas like the Kruger National Park . But in Africa, the system has worked in private reserves with a relatively small elephant population, where every individual can be easily identified/
