#Attractants: Refers to any material that appeals to bears and draws them to an area. This includes garbage, birdseed, and human/pet food, smells, and non-food items, such as petroleum products or citronella. Attractants may also include natural foods, like berry bushes, or clover (Bear guidelines).
#Aversion conditioning: Behaviour modifying therapy which pairs an unwanted behaviour with an unpleasant or uncomfortable stimulus. The objective is to make the elephant associate the negative feeling (of the stimulus) with the action (we want to modify). When that happens the unwanted behaviour (crop raiding or entering human use areas) is stopped as the elephant associates the unpleasant experience with it. For example, every time the elephants come near the boundary it is chased away by the RRT/PRT it soon associates being chased (unpleasant feeling) with moving towards the boundary and then starts to avoid going towards the boundary.
#Capacity: The combination of all the strengths, attributes and resources available within a community, society or organization that can be used to achieve agreed goals
#Capacity building for Snake Rescuer/Expert: Use of drugs to restrain an animal, these vary from Training should be at the rescue centre covering a minimum period of 15 hours over 2 weeks, where under supervision of trainer/expert, the apprentice is allowed to participate in mock rescue/activities of the rescue centre. The person should work under an experienced rescuer for at least a period of 6 months and be involved as apprentice in over 50 rescue operations before being deemed fit to serve as a rescuer. Evaluation of at least three rescuers (the evaluation sheet should be provided in appendix) with whom the apprentice accompanied in operations should be obtained to be qualified as a rescuer. At any point during the training the apprentice can be asked to leave or extend the period of apprenticeship until satisfactory levels of expertise is demonstrated.
#Captive elephant: A wild elephant that has been captured and trained or a captive born elephant that is trained and kept in captivity.
#Capture Myopathy: A disease complex associated with capture or handling of any wild species of mammals or birds. The key feature is hyperthermia - in other words an increase in body temperature. It will occur when an animal is unable to cool itself and may result from a variety of factors including hot weather and direct sunlight, overexertion, drugs, a heavy coat, and reduced blood flow. The result is often death which may occur immediately or hours, days or weeks later.
#Coexistence: Coexistence is defined as a dynamic but sustainable state in which humans and wildlife co-adapt to living in shared landscapes, where human interactions with wildlife are governed by effective institutions that ensure long‐term wildlife population persistence, social legitimacy, and tolerable levels of risk.
#Competencies: The combination of knowledge, skill, experience and attributes that leads to consistently successful performance is known as competencies. Competencies are demonstrated behaviours that lead to success. National Training Policy (2012) of India defines competencies to encompass knowledge, skills and behaviour, which are required in an individual for effectively performing the functions of a post
#Corridors: Corridors are narrow habitat passages that connect two larger habitat patches which are separated by land use changes.
#Deterrents: Any olfactory, visual or auditory cue that discourages an animal from crossing a boundary marked by the cue.
#Dispersal: Movement from place of birth (natal home range in case of elephants) to place of reproduction (new home range in the present context)
#Dispersal routes: Paths taken by wild animals when they disperse, these may be used seasonally for some time but eventually they cease to be used by the original animal(s) that used it. They may however be used by other animals which follow the same route based on scent trails.
#Drive: Chasing elephants from human use areas or from the periphery of the forest back into the forest. The distance of drives varies depending on how far the elephants are from the forest boundary. Drives also mean long distance translocation of elephants from one area to another area by chasing them.
#Early warning system: Systems that allow early detection of the leopard/ elephant or any other animal so that preventive action can be taken to avoid conflict.
#Electric Fence: This fence is powered by an energizer which converts electric power (usually from a battery that is charged by a solar power) into a high voltage but very short duration pulse which gives a short duration shock (usually around 150 microseconds) to the animal touching it. This deters animals from trying to break though the fence, however this is a psychological barrier and not a physical barrier and elephants can break through it if they get habituated to the shock or by using other means, including using tusks which are non-conducting to break the fence.
#Emergency / Crisis situations: Situations which are sudden, unexpected, have the potential to be serious/are serious in nature and therefore require immediate intervention from concerned stakeholders, to minimise loss of lives and assets.
#Habitual foraging: If opportunistically crop raiding elephants continue to have easy access to crops or if they learn that the noise making and shining of torches does not harm them then they become habitual crop raiders which are very difficult to manage.
#Harmonious Coexistence: A balance between the welfare of animals and people where both are given equal importance. Overlap in space and resource use is managed in a manner that minimizes
#Human-Wildlife Conflict: Human-wildlife conflict (HWC) refers to the negative interaction between people and wild animals, leading to a negative impact on people or their resources such as human death and injury, crop damage, loss of livestock and other properties, apart from affecting their psychology/ emotional well-being, and on the wild animals or their habitats.
#Human-Wildlife Conflict Mitigation: Interventions to reduce the negative impact of human-wildlife interaction on people or their resources and on the wildlife or their habitats; it includes strategies to address the drivers and pressures of conflict, reducing the vulnerability of people and wildlife, and institutional capacity development.
#HWC Mitigation Operations: All aspects of works involved with the mitigation of human-wildlife conflict in India, including, but not limited to, the restraint, capture, immobilization, handling, transport, release and re-introduction, treatment and management for welfare of animals involved in human-wildlife conflict, as well as management, care, compensation, medical treatment, prevention of accidents or loss of life and welfare of humans involved in human-wildlife conflict.
#Landscape approach: It relates to conservation, agriculture and other land uses seeks to address the increasingly complex and widespread environmental, social and political challenges that transcend traditional management boundaries. It seeks to provide tools and concepts for managing land use practices for both forest and non-forest land to ensure that land-use change does not lead to HWC. For enhanced effectiveness, it would be important that managers also look at the larger landscape for developing HWC conflict mitigation strategies, as some species such as elephant and tiger range / disperse over very large areas. Unless a comprehensive and integrated HWC plan is implemented over several forest divisions, the problem is likely to only shift from one place to another and will yield short-term relief rather than getting actually addressed.
#Landscape: Area enclosed by the connected elephant range in a given geographical region. This would not include habitats connected by long-distance dispersals.