The Elephant whisperer

• Directed by Kartiki Gonsalves and produced by Guneet Monga, Indian documentary The Elephant Whisperers emerged as the winner in the Best Documentary Short category.
  • It became the first Indian production that has won an Academy Award for the Documentary Short category.
• The film also highlights the stunning beauty of Tamil Nadu’s Mudumalai National Park and gives a peek into the lives of the Kattunayakan, an indigenous community that inhabits parts of South India.
• The film is based on the life and work of Bomman and his wife Bellie who foster orphaned elephant calves. Bomman and Bellie are both from the Kattunayakan tribe.
  • Kattunayakans, one of the 75 “Particularly Vulnerable Tribal Groups” (PVTGs) in India, are settled in parts of Tamil Nadu and Kerala.

About Mudumalai Tiger Reserve

• It is located in the Nilgiris District of Tamil Nadu state, at the tri-junction of three states, viz, Karnataka, Kerala and Tamil Nadu.
• It has a common boundary with Wayanad Wildlife Sanctuary (Kerala) on the West, Bandipur Tiger Reserve (Karnataka) on the North, and the Nilgiris North Division on the South and East and Gudalur Forest Division on the South West, together forming a large conservation landscape for flagship species such as Tiger and Asian Elephant.
• The Reserve has tall grasses, commonly referred to as ‘Elephant Grass’.