Nilip (Karbi Anglong): This Christmas Santa Claus is all set to shower unusual gifts to the residents of Ram Terang, a remote forest village in Assam’s Karbi Anglong district about 300 km from Guwahati.

The 19 Christian families of this village will celebrate their Christmas not only in a new location from the original Ram Terang, but in newly constructed concrete houses.

The villagers, out of their noble gesture for the cause of elephants conservation, have willed to vacate their original Ram Terang and shifted three kilometer away to a new location where all of them will reside in their new homes from December 25. The new location is a recreation of their old village and has been named New Ram Terang.

The relocation of Ram Terang and rehabilitation of the villagers is part of the exercise undertaking by the Wildlife Trust of India(WTI) and Karbi Anglong Autonomous Council (KAAC) with support from UK’s Elephant Family, International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) and Japan Tiger and Elephant (JTEF) for securing the Kalapahar-Daigrong elephant corridor that passes right through this hamlet. This corridor is frequently used by elephants for their movement to Kaziranga national park, a world heritage site, and even up to Intaki in Nagaland.

Sir Evelyn de Rothschild, a close friend of late conservationist Mark Shand who founded the Elephant Family, inaugurated the New Ram Terang village on Wednesday.

This is first time in Northeast that villagers have vacated their hamlet for passage to elephants. The villagers will have their house warming on Christmas, The Times of India reported.

“I thank you (villagers) all for the support you have shown. You should come up with new ideas for the cause of conservation,” Rothchild, also the founder patron of Elephant Family, said.

On July this year Prince Charles and Camilla hosted a fundraising function in London to help secure jumbo corridors in the northeast and elsewhere in the country. Five conservation organizations — Elephant Family, International Fund for Animal Welfare (IFAW), IUCN, World Land Trust and Wildlife Trust of India (WTI) — signed an MoU to raise £20 million to secure 100 elephant corridors in the country, including in the northeast.

“We are eagerly waiting for this Christmas because this will be a new festivity from what we celebrated in the past,” Ram Terang, the village head who formally received the keys of 19 new houses at a function here on Wednesday, said.

Terang conceded because of his old village’s location on the corridor people had to suffer crop losses and damages to their houses by elephants.