75 © Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2021 Rukhsana et al. (eds.), Habitat, Ecology and Ekistics, Advances in Asian Human-Environmental Research, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-49115-4_4 Chapter 4 Habitat Linkages for Asian Elephants in Central Indian Landscape  C. S. Abhijitha, G. Areendran, Krishna Raj, Pamposh Bhat, and Mehebub Sahana 4.1 Introduction The Mahilong-Kalimati and Chandil-Matha are two inter-state corridors that are under the pressure of anthropogenic developments like hydro-electric projects, rail- way lines, state highways, human encroachments, etc. It usually requires large space for its shelter and survival. Elephas maximus (Asian elephant) is the largest terrestrial mammal in India that belongs to the family Elephantidae (Menon 2003). The IUCN Red List categorizes Asian elephants as ‘endangered’ (Choudhury et al. 2008). Asian elephants migrate over greater distances in search of food, water and safety and often use the same corridors regularly and if these corridors are blocked, then they tend to enter into human settlements in search of the crops that often leads to human-elephant confict and poses a major threat to their survival (Areendran et al., 2020; Menon 2003). Asian elephants are severely affected by the loss of their natural habitat due to the increasing human population, habitat degrada- tion and fragmentation (Pokhriyal et al., 2020; Karkala 2016). Poaching male ele- phants for their tusks is another major threat to the male elephants (Asian Elephant Secretariat 2019; Karkala 2016). Wildlife corridors provide for the linkage between two or more habitats with similar living conditions for the wild species as it main- tains colonization, migration and breeding of fauna (Yadav et al., 2020; Johnsingh & Williams 1999). The corridors chosen by species are usually vegetation-based habi- tats that facilitate their movement, where there is less energy expenditure required and low risk of being predated. Corridors differ from one another in size, shape, length and composition (Johnsingh and Williams 1999). The wider the corridor, the C. S. Abhijitha · P. Bhat Guru Gobind Singh Indraprastha University, New Delhi, India G. Areendran · K. Raj · M. Sahana (*) IGCMC, WWF-India, New Delhi, India e-mail: gareendran@wwfndia.net; kraj@wwfndia.net; msahana@wwfndia.net