Second Project
Creation of a permanent base camp to conduct fieldwork
In Prajna's view, the idea of managing the projects of conservation from the laboratories of a university or from a headquarters in a big city always appears to her to be absurd. As the threats that torment the elephants and their territories are situated on the field. The same applies to the knowledge and the efforts, which require a permanent presence on the field.
After a long research, Prajna Chowta finally located an agricultural terrain of eight hectares (nearly twenty acres), situated in the heart of a natural reserve that lies in the largest territory of wild elephants, extending almost 250 km.
This ground is located between the states of Tamil Nadu, Kerala and Karnataka, in the south-west of India, which includes the notable National Parks of Mudumalai, Bandipur and Nagarahole.
Karnataka is otherwise the state in India that shelters the largest population of wild elephants with around 6,000 specimens, according to estimations.
After a lot of difficulties, the Foundation at last managed to buy with her own funds this agricultural land where Prajna Chowta could install a permanent base camp and initiate different activities.
In the first place, the foundation was able to acquire two female elephants in their twenties: Kalpana and Kunti.
They were destined to drag wood, neglected by their former proprietors since the end of the timber exploitation. So, today the foundation can bring them a more peaceful existence, and thanks to an authorisation from the Karnataka Government's Ministry of Environment, it can let them graze in the forest environment and tthey can interact regularly with wild elephants.
The presence of Kalpana and Kunti has permitted Prajna chowta to study profoundly again the relation between man and animal and refine by a number of observations, her knowledge of their behaviour in their habitat, their natural alimentation, their movements, and their interactions with wild elephants.
Thanks to them, the Foundation put to use, step by step, two long and exacting tasks: the mapping of the tracks of wild elephants in the forest, and the compilation of a photographic dossier of the population of wild elephants. The Foundation elephants represent notably the irreplaceable interface for the approach and study of the wild specimens.
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