Wildlife Corridor

Wildlife Corridor

What is 'Wildlife Corridor'

Wildlife Corridor is a stretch of land (forest, plantation, or mixed use) that connect two or more larger wildlife habitats (like National Parks or Sanctuaries). It acts as 'linkage' or 'nature highway' that allow animals to move between protected areas to find food, water, and mates without coming into conflict with human settlements or infrastructures.

Official Definition of 'Wildlife Corridor'

The concept is officially recognized as a "Right of Passage" for long-ranging animals like Tigers and Elephants. Without these corridors, forests become "ecological islands" where animals are trapped, leading to inbreeding and local extinction. They are not always dense forests; they can be narrow strips of land, riverbanks, or even privately owned plantations that animals traditionally use to migrate.

Ministry of Environment, Forests & Climate Change's Project Elephant has defined Wildlife Corridors as strips of habitat or movement pathways that connect otherwise disconnected habitat patches. Because of human development, many natural habitats of elephants are isolated from each other. This results in the long-term consequences of lack of genetic viability that risks elephant extinctions. In other words, if elephants are trapped in one place, they end up inbreeding, which makes the herd weak and prone to disease. Eventually, they could die out. The wildlife corridors are travel paths that stay open and protected so they can find food and find mates from different herds. Consequently, securing these 'nature highways' is the central strategy for conservation, as it ensures that elephant populations remain connected, genetically healthy, and safe from the slow decline of isolation.

'Wildlife Corridor' as defined in legislations

The Wildlife Corridors Bill, 2019

A Private Member's Bill introduced in the Lok Sabha sought to codify the concept of connectivity which is currently absent in the parent Wildlife (Protection) Act, 1972. Section 2 of the Bill defines a "wildlife corridor" as "a habitat linkage that joins two or more areas of wildlife habitat allowing movement of wildlife from one area to another."

Legal Provisions relating to 'Wildlife Corridor'

Indian legislations do not explicitly define 'Wildlife Corridor'. Instead, the concept is derived implicitly through specific provisions.

Wild Life (Protection) Act, 1972

Section 38V(3)(b) is one of the most explicit statutory reference. It mandates that the Tiger Conservation Plan must "ensure ecologically compatible land uses in areas linking one protected area or tiger reserve with another... so as to provide dispersal habitats and corridor for spill over population". The term "areas linking" is used as a synonym for corridors.

Section 36A defines areas owned by the State Government adjacent to National Parks or Sanctuaries, or those which "link one protected area with another," as Conservation Reserves. This provision is used for notifying corridors on government land.

These protected areas under the Act cannot be used for environmentally unsustainable activities. Exceptions are made only in cases of public interest, subject to approval by the National Board for Wildlife and consultation with the National Tiger Conservation Authority.

Environment (Protection) Act, 1986

The Act empowers the Government to restrict industrial operations based on proximity to protected areas to precent environmental degradation. Eco-Sensitive Zones (ESZs) declared under this Act often function as wildlife corridors. Since the Wild Life (Protection) Act, 1972 focuses mainly on National Parks (where no human activity is allowed), the Environment Protection Act (EPA) is used to protect the land between the parks (corridors) by declaring them Eco-Sensitive Zones (ESZ) and restricting industries there.

Van (Sanrakshan Evam Samvardhan) Adhiniyam, 2023

The new Act exempts certain categories of land from its purview. Most critically, Section 1A(2)(c)(i) exempts "linear projects" (roads, railways) located within 100 km of international borders or Line of Control, if they are of "national importance" and concern "national security". A vast number of India's critical wildlife corridors lie within this 100 km zone. This includes the Terai Arc Landscape (Uttarakhand/UP/Bihar) that houses tiger and elephant corridors along the Nepal border. Important corridors in Arunachal Pradesh, Assam (Kaziranga-Karbi Anglong), and West Bengal (Buxa-Chilapata) are now potentially exempt from FCA clearance scrutiny for strategic projects. Recognizing the peril this posed, the Supreme Court issued an interim order directing that the broad Godavarman definition of "forest" must continue to apply until states complete their process of identifying forest lands. This judicial intervention temporarily stays the full deregulatory impact of the 2023 Act on corridor lands.

Institutional Framework

The National Board for Wildlife

The Standing Committee of the NBWL (SC-NBWL) is the apex body for wildlife clearance. Any project within a Protected Area or its ESZ (and by extension, recognized corridors) requires SC-NBWL approval. The SC-NBWL is often the final arbiter on whether a linear project (road/rail) can pass through a corridor. It also recommends the use of ecological planning and low-impact construction before providing approval.

Wildlife Institute of India Guidelines

Guidelines notified by the Wildlife Institute of India and adopted by the Government are used as standard reference points for mitigation plans. Eco-friendly Measures to Mitigate Impacts of Linear Infrastructure on Wildlife Guidelines 2016, though a technical document, have been given the force of law by NGT orders and State organizations.

It specifies exact dimensions for underpasses. For example, elephant underpasses must have a minimum height of 6-8 meters and a wide span to reduce the "tunnel effect". These guidelines apply not just to new roads but also to the retrofitting of existing infrastructure in sensitive habitats.

National Tiger Conservation Authority (NTCA) SOPs

The NTCA has issued Standard Operating Procedures (SOPs) under Section 38O of the Wildlife Protection Act to manage tigers in corridors. These SOPs guide forest departments on how to handle tigers moving through human-dominated landscapes (corridors), prioritizing safe passage over capture unless there is a threat to human life. Strict protocols for investigating tiger deaths in corridors are followed to ensure poaching is ruled out.

"Right of Passage" Report (WTI/Project Elephant)

The Right of Passage: Elephant Corridors of India report (2nd Edition, 2017) serves as the definitive administrative atlas for elephant corridors. While published by an NGO (Wildlife Trust of India) in collaboration with the government, it is accepted by courts and the MoEFCC as the authoritative list of corridors.

Judicial Precedents

The NH-44 (Pench) Mitigation Case

The widening of National Highway 7 (now NH-44) cut through the critical corridor between Pench Tiger Reserve (Maharashtra) and Pench Tiger Reserve (Madhya Pradesh). The National Highways Authority of India (NHAI) initially refused to construct expensive mitigation structures. The matter reached the Supreme Court via the Central Empowered Committee (CEC). The Supreme Court mandated the construction of the world's largest contiguous wildlife underpass system (9 structures spanning over 750 meters each in some sections). The court relied entirely on the WII's technical report, dismissing NHAI's cost-cutting proposals. It established the legal principle that the "cost of mitigation" is an internalized cost of the project, and public funds must be spent to ensure connectivity in statutory corridors.

The Bombay High Court defined wildlife corridor as areas that "connect wildlife populations that could become isolated from viable continuous habitats due to habitat destruction and degradation." For example, the Sahyadri-Konkan corridor was secured by directing the notification of the Sawantwadi-Dodamarg area as an ESA.

Types of 'Wildlife Corridor'

Wildlife corridors are categorized on the basis of their physical characteristics and the movement patters facilitates by them.

• Linear Corridors: These are direct, uninterrupted strips of habitat connecting two larger habitats. They are often called a "bridge" of forest. these strips are usually narrow and expose wildlife to predators, invasion species, and human disturbances.
• Landscape Corridors: these are broad landscapes allowing for movement across a wide front. They are crucial for maintaining ecosystem function, water retention, and broad genetic flow. This type most closely aligns to "Eco Sensitive zone" of India.
• Stepping Stones Corridors: these are small noncontiguous patches of habitat that facilitate movement for the movement of animals such as birds, large carnivores by providing temporary refuge during dispersal.
• Riparian Corridors: These follow rivers and streams and provide a habitat and a pathway for wildlife.

International Experiences:

Analyzing global models that have institutionalized connectivity:

1. The North American Model: Data-Driven Designation (USA)

The US employs a highly technocratic approach to corridors, heavily reliant on telemetry data.

• Wyoming Migration Corridors: The state of Wyoming uses GPS collar data to set up migration corridors for mule deer and pronghorn. India often uses "expert opinion" or "anecdotal sightings" (which you can see in WTI reports), but Wyoming needs statistical proof of movement (Brownian Bridge Movement Models) before it can set up a corridor.
• Land Acquisition (The Easement Model): The US uses Conservation Easements instead of the adversarial land acquisition system used in India. The Land and Water Conservation Fund (LWCF) pays private landowners to keep their land undeveloped while still owning it.
• The Florida Wildlife Corridor Act is a law that recognizes a network of connected lands across the state. It sets aside money to buy development rights, knowing that connectivity needs a "mosaic" of protected and working lands.

2. The European Union: Legislative Mandates (Natura 2000)

The EU approaches connectivity through a rigid legislative framework.

• Article 10: Clearly tells member states to help manage landscape features like river banks and hedgerows that act as stepping stones or corridors.
• The Natura 2000 Network is the biggest network of protected areas in the world. But it has a "connectivity gap." The sites are safe, but the space between them is often used for farming.
• Green Infrastructure: To close this gap, the EU promotes "Green Infrastructure," which is a way of planning that includes natural solutions in both urban and rural areas. It's like India's "Smart City" ideas, but the law says that biodiversity must be protected.

3. The African Model: Community Economics (Kenya)

It offers the most relevant lessons for India regarding human-wildlife coexistence.

• Community Conservancies: In the Maasai Mara and Amboseli ecosystems, corridors are kept open by Community Conservancies, not by government orders. Landowners lease their land to tourism operators or conservancy trusts. They get guaranteed monthly payments in return.
• Sharing of profits: Kenya's conservancies are often private-community partnerships where money goes directly to households. This is different from India's "Community Reserves," where financial freedom is limited and the Forest Department has a lot of say in how things are run.
• Transfrontier Conservation Areas (TFCAs): Southern Africa (SADC) operates corridors across national borders (e.g., Kgalagadi Transfrontier Park), acknowledging that wildlife ignores political boundaries. This needs high-level diplomatic agreements.

Best Practices for India:

Based on these international models, several practices could be adapted.

1. Legal Recognition of Telemetry Data: In order to reduce reliance on dubious "expert opinion," India should require that "Notified Corridors" be defined by telemetry data in accordance with the Wyoming model.

2. Conservation Easements: Using the US/Kenya model of compensating landowners to preserve "land use" (such as agriculture or tea) instead of purchasing the land itself.

3. Green Credits for Corridors: tea gardeners or private framers who maintain functional corridors can be rewarded under India's new 'Green Credit' program turning connectivity into a tradable asset.

4. Structural Mitigation Standards: The success of NH-44 underpasses suggests that India should standardize "Eco-duct" designs for all linear infrastructure in corridor zones, moving from ad-hoc mitigation to mandatory design codes.

Research that engages with "Wildlife Corridor"

Research Document "Right of passage: Elephant Corridor of India"

This report provides one of the most comprehensive explorations of wildlife corridors in the country, treating them as living, social–ecological systems rather than mere stretches of land. It focuses on elephant movement across different regions like North-Western, Central, North-Eastern, Northern West Bengal, and Southern India. It documents each corridor with remarkable consistency, noting what landscapes it connects, its size, legal status, habitat quality, dominant vegetation, and how frequently elephants use it. What makes this report particularly valuable is its effort to move beyond technical mapping and incorporate the human realities shaping these spaces. It identifies specific villages located in or near corridors, the number of households, livelihood pressures such as fuelwood collection, grazing, and timber extraction, and records long-term human-elephant conflict such as crop damage, injuries, and deaths.

The report also quantifies development pressures by naming highways, railway lines, power canals, and other structures fragmenting corridors, sometimes even providing vehicle counts per hour to show how traffic disrupts movement. Importantly, it does not stop at diagnostics but also ranks each corridor by ecological importance and feasibility of conservation. Additionally, it offers detailed, actionable solutions, from completing flyovers and regulating train speeds to relocating settlements, securing land parcels, building wildlife crossings, or installing animal detection systems. In doing so, the report reframes corridors as shared spaces where elephants, people, infrastructure, and policy intersect, offering not just a map of where elephants walk, but a realistic plan for ensuring they can continue to do so safely.

Research Document "Comments on the Wildlife (Protection) Amendment Bill 2023"

The report underscores the critical role of wildlife corridors in India’s conservation framework by emphasising their ecological function as vital connectors between the country’s scattered but strictly protected network of Protected Areas (PAs). It notes that these corridors serve as essential wildlife refuges and migration routes, supporting a significant proportion of species that live and breed outside PAs, including the Striped Hyena, Dhole, Sloth Bear, Grey Wolf, Golden Jackal, and nearly one-third of India’s tiger population. Despite their importance, these habitats remain highly vulnerable due to increasing land use and land cover changes that obstruct movement, heighten human-wildlife conflict, and expose wildlife to greater risks of poaching. The report argues that this vulnerability is compounded by a regulatory vacuum: while the Wildlife (Protection) Act, 1972 offers limited protection to forests outside PAs, these areas are neither systematically managed nor adequately safeguarded. Crucially, developmental or industrial projects within PAs require prior scrutiny by the National Board for Wildlife (NBWL), but this safeguard does not extend to territories outside PAs or their buffer and eco-sensitive zones, where wildlife corridors are often located. The Wildlife (Protection) Amendment Bill, 2021, the report contends, fails to address this gap by not recognizing or protecting wildlife corridors, migratory routes, or flyways. To remedy this omission, the report proposes a legislative intervention through the insertion of a new Section 36E creating a category of “Deemed Wildlife Reserves.” This designation would apply to forest areas protected under the Indian Forest Act, 1927 or State Forest laws that are known wildlife habitats or recognised corridors. Although these areas could continue to be governed under existing Working Plans of the respective State Forest Divisions, the report recommends extending the restrictions under Section 29 of the WPA to them so that activities involving the destruction, removal, or exploitation of wildlife or habitat are strictly regulated. Overall, the report argues that wildlife corridors are indispensable for the survival of many scheduled species yet remain overlooked and unprotected under current law, and therefore require explicit and robust legal recognition through the creation of Deemed Wildlife Reserves.

Research Document "Analysis of Wildlife Clearances in India, 2020"

This report examines wildlife corridors not by mapping them or documenting their physical boundaries, but by revealing how vulnerable they are to ongoing regulatory failures, especially outside Protected Areas (PAs). It shows that corridors such as Conservation Reserves under the Wildlife (Protection) Act, 1972, contiguous forest patches, Reserved Forests, Protected Forests, or Eco-Sensitive Zones are increasingly being fragmented by projects approved by the Standing Committee of the National Board for Wildlife (SC-NBWL). Although the NBWL is legally mandated to conserve wildlife. However, it must approve projects affecting Tiger Reserves and areas linking one PA or Tiger Reserve with another. This demonstrates how this obligation is routinely undermined. In 2020 alone, 40.74 percent of forest diversion occurred due to linear projects such as highways, transmission lines, railways, and bridges that cut across entire landscapes and disrupt animal movement. The report explains that diversion of forest land in corridors outside PAs is especially harmful because it fragments migratory paths and increases wildlife deaths through road collisions, electrocution, and human-wildlife conflict. It illustrates these risks through real cases, including the widening of NH-4A and installation of a transmission line in the Bhagwan Mahaveer Wildlife Sanctuary and Mollem National Park—an ecologically fragile tiger corridor connecting Goa to the Kali Tiger Reserve in Karnataka and the approval of NH-363 expansion and a new railway line within the corridor linking Kawal, Tadoba-Andhari, and Indravati Tiger Reserves. Additional road projects were even approved across a 5.7414-hectare tiger corridor connecting the same reserves. The report shows that conservation failure is often caused by the accumulation of multiple, individually approved Projects Within the same critical corridor. This element is often neglected by the SC-NBWL. Additonally, these multiple approvals in the same corridor create permanent physical and ecological barriers, restricting movement and increasing mortality. For arboreal mammals, such as primates and flying squirrels, whose survival depends on canopy continuity, roads and transmission lines sever these “aerial superhighways,” destroying vegetation, disrupting plant-animal interactions, and breaking genetic flow. The SC-NBWL is criticized for ignoring the combined impact of four simultaneous projects—railway doubling, highway widening, and transmission infrastructure—within the Bhagwan Mahaveer Sanctuary in the Western Ghats. Even when mitigation is imposed, the report shows it is often inadequate or contradictory to expert recommendations. For example, despite guidelines advising that roads inside National Parks and Core Critical Tiger Habitats should not be widened or upgraded, the SC-NBWL approved six road-expansion projects to four, six, and eight lanes. Similarly, while approving a broad-gauge railway line through the Kawal tiger corridor, the Committee only required tunnels and fencing, forcing the National Tiger Conservation Authority to insist that at least 15–20 percent of the track include wildlife passages, while a highway through the Mukundra Hills Tiger Reserve was cleared with just five underpasses spaced roughly every two kilometers. Through these examples, the report reframes wildlife corridors as fragile, essential ecological systems that are being dismantled not by accident, but through coordinated administrative decisions that treat them as expendable land parcels. What official documents describe as a simple connection between protected areas, this report reveals as a network of delicate wires—continuously severed by unchecked linear development—ensuring landscape fragmentation, ecological isolation, and the eventual decline of wildlife populations.

Research Document "Wildlife Corridors in India: Viable Legal Tools for Species Conservation?"

This report examines wildlife corridors by first grounding them in scientific necessity and then revealing the stark reality that, despite their ecological importance, they lack statutory protection in India. Rather than simply mapping boundaries or movement patterns, it explains that corridors are essential “linear landscape elements” enabling animals to migrate, forage, adapt to climate change, and maintain genetic diversity by reconnecting fragmented sub-populations It is a critical function given that isolated populations are more vulnerable to extinction due to environmental, demographic, and genetic instability. The report stresses that corridors also sustain sink populations and help species survive changing habitat conditions. Yet, India still offers them no “hard” legal recognition, no strict development restrictions, and no enforceable protection, leaving connectivity conservation dormant at the legal level. To show why this matters, the report moves beyond official documentation and unpacks the conceptual complexities that make corridors difficult to legislate. The definition of wildlife corridor is often the source of constant confusion as it gives little clarity as to its form and context. Their structure varies dramatically by species (a tiger corridor cannot resemble an elephant one), and experts still debate whether they are temporary-use connectors or permanent habitat components. It illustrates the consequences of this ambiguity through case studies: the Kanha-Pench tiger corridor threatened by NH-7 widening and a 17.9 km railway expansion; the Kilpura-Khatima-Surai corridor endangered by NH-125 widening, approved using a misleading project summary; and the Kaziranga-Karbi Anglong landscape repeatedly fragmented by NH-37, forcing wildlife across highways during floods and worsened by the Numaligarh refinery’s illegal boundary wall blocking an elephant route. Linear infrastructure such as roads, railways, and transmission lines are identified as the greatest threat, causing land degradation, severed habitats, wildlife deaths, and broken canopy continuity for arboreal species. Instead of treating corridors as doomed, the report shows how India already possesses legal tools that could protect them but remain underused. For instance, Eco-Sensitive Zone guidelines direct states to include corridors even beyond 10 km in ESZs; Section 36A of the Wildlife Protection Act allows government-owned linkages between protected areas to be declared Conservation Reserves; and Section 36C enables communities to secure privately owned corridors as Community Reserves. Borrowing from global environmental law, the report recommends qualitative conservation goals like the EU’s “favorable conservation status” to shift Indian policy from procedural compliance to measurable ecological outcomes. Ultimately, by presenting corridors as biologically vital, legally unacknowledged, and socially contested spaces, the report argues that conservation cannot rely on mapping alone; it must urgently activate legal, administrative, and community-driven mechanisms before continued fragmentation turns them into ecological casualties.

Research Document "Assessing The Need for a Comprehensive Legal Framework for Wildlife Corridors in India"

This report goes far beyond routine documentation by demonstrating not only the scientific necessity of wildlife corridors but also their deep legal vulnerability in India. It defines corridors as essential ecological linkages that allow species to move between populations, preventing inbreeding, low genetic diversity, and long-term population decline, while also helping wildlife relocate during natural disasters, climate-driven habitat shifts, or stochastic events. These corridors includes forests, wetlands, river systems, and even artificial environments can support movement—and conserving umbrella species such as tigers (32 corridors) and elephants (150 corridors) indirectly safeguards entire ecosystems. Despite this importance, the report highlights that India’s existing legal framework, including the Wildlife Protection Act, 1972, does not explicitly protect habitat connectivity, and although a bill addressing corridors was introduced in Parliament, no dedicated legislation has been enacted, leaving connectivity conservation legally dormant. This statutory vacuum has accelerated fragmentation, especially because recent amendments allow certain government projects to bypass forest clearance requirements. Linear infrastructure like highways, railways, and transmission lines cuts through forests, causing erosion, habitat loss, wildlife deaths, and long-term landscape degradation, as seen in corridors such as Kaziranga-Karbi Anglong (NH-37/715), Bandipur-Nagarhole-Wayanad–Mudumalai (NH-67, NH-212), and Chilla-Motichur (Rishikesh-Haridwar-Dehradun railway line). Regulatory failures worsen the situation, with the National Board for Wildlife approving projects inside or within 10 kilometers of protected areas, including nine limestone mining proposals near Mukundra Tiger Reserve, while illegal encroachments, like the Numaligarh refinery wall that killed elephants, further tighten these movement pathways. The report argues that existing legal provisions, while imperfect, could still be mobilized such as Section 38V(3)(b) of the WLPA requiring Tiger Conservation Plans to ensure ecologically compatible land use in reserves and linking corridors, and Eco-Sensitive Zone guidelines intended to protect connectivity but rarely implemented meaningfully, as most states notify only 100 meters to 4 kilometers of ESZ, insufficient for wide ranging megafauna. It notes that courts have stepped in where legislation has not. The Supreme Court has restricted mining in the Hadgarh-Kuldiha elephant corridor, stopped railway line doubling in a tiger corridor spanning Goa, Maharashtra, and Karnataka, and halted construction around Kaziranga and its nine animal corridors. Importantly, the report broadens the understanding of corridors by incorporating social and public health dimensions, stressing that conservation must account for the livelihoods of communities and pastoralists dependent on these landscapes, like the Van Gujjars relocated from the Chilla Range, and cautioning that overcrowded or shrinking habitats can increase the spread of infectious diseases as animals move through fragmented spaces. By exposing ecological urgency, legal loopholes, infrastructural pressures, and overlooked human realities, the report reframes wildlife corridors not as passive geographic connectors but as critical, endangered conservation priorities requiring immediate legal, administrative, and socio-ecological action.

Challenges

The primary challenges stem from human activity and deficiencies in the current legal and enforcement framework:

1. Confusion around what a corridor is: There is still no universally accepted understanding of what legally constitutes a corridor (is it a temporary route or a permanent part of an animal's habitat) which makes the regulation difficult.

2. Misreporting and missing information: Project proposals have inaccurately claimed that roads do not pass through corridors, and SC-NBWL minutes sometimes omit the affected area, making it nearly impossible to determine the real extent of harm.

3. Human-wildlife conflict: As towns, villages, and cities expand, human settlements enter forests, protected areas, and tiger reserves. This breaks large forests into smaller pieces, which separates animal populations and threatens their long-term survival.

4. Impact of infrastructure projects: Roads, railways, power lines, and other linear structures cut through forests. They cause land degradation, soil erosion, animal deaths due to collisions, and electrocution. For example. Kaziranga–Karbi Anglong, Assam is affected by NH-37, Bandipur–Nagarhole–Wayanad–Mudumalai is affected by NH-67 and NH-212 and, Chilla–Motichur corridor.

5. Project approvals in sensitive zones: The National Board for Wildlife has approved development projects near protected areas such as limestone mining close to Mukundra Tiger Reserve. The projects are approved even though they conflict with WLPA provisions and earlier expert recommendations.

6. Illegal encroachments: Structures built unlawfully (like the wall in the Numaligarh Refinery case) block animal movement and have led to elephant deaths.

7. No cumulative impact review: Each project is evaluated in isolation, even in heavily burdened areas like the Bhagwan Mahaveer Wildlife Sanctuary.

8. No clear legal protection: Existing environmental and wildlife laws do not specifically recognise or protect wildlife corridors. The wildlife corridor bill has still not been passed and without such laws, forest fragmentation would continue. Additionally, the Forest (Conservation) Amendment Bill, 2023, is feared to further accelerate corridor fragmentation by relaxing clearance requirements.

9. Insufficient Eco Sensitive Zones: Although the guideline suggests a 10 km buffer around protected areas, most states notify only 100 meters to 4 km, which is too small for wide-ranging animals like elephants and tigers.

10. Weak Implementation: Even when guidelines exist, development projects continue in corridor areas due to poor monitoring and enforcement.

11. Relocation challenges: Moving people out of corridor areas is slow and difficult. Only around 2,900 families were relocated over 30 years. Resettlement also affects livelihoods, especially for pastoral communities.

12. Spread of Diseases: As animals move through narrow or crowded corridors, diseases may spread more easily between populations.

Way Ahead:

1. Legal and Enforcement Measures: The Wildlife Corridors Bill, 2019, should be enacted to formally identify and protect corridors and restrict harmful activities. And enforcement should be strengthened by authorities regularly monitoring corridor areas and taking action for any illegal activity. Section 3 of the bill proposes the constitution of a "Wildlife Corridors Identification Board" to identify exclusive areas in every State. Section 5 explicitly lists prohibited acts within these corridors, including construction, tree cutting, and the use of firearms or firecrackers. This bill represents a solution to the current legal gap.

2. Conservation Planning and Design: Wildlife corridors should be formally incorporated into protected-area management through proper mapping, planning, and integration into reserve boundaries. Buffer zones should be established as they can minimize human disturbance and provide animals with safer movement spaces.

3. Community participation and Livelihood Support: Effective corridor conservation requires active involvement of local communities through participatory mechanisms like Joint Forest Management, ensuring that people living near corridors have a voice in decision-making. Further, a holistic approach to human-wildlife conflict focusing on coexistence rather than exclusion is essential, particularly for pastoral and forest-dependent communities whose socio-economic realities intersect with conservation priorities.

4. Make impact assessments mandatory: Every project in or near a corridor must undergo scientific evaluation before approval.

5. Build Stakeholder dialogue: Development, forest, wildlife, and community interests must be brought into the same conversation to prevent conflict-driven decision-making.

6. End Blanket exemptions: Permissions for infrastructure in corridors should be case-specific and follow the full Forest (Conservation) Act clearance process.

7. Build Science backed mitigation: Where infrastructure already exists, construct wildlife overpasses/underpasses, widen bridge spans, implement monitoring systems, regulate vehicle/train speeds at night, and prohibit waste dumping near tracks.