New Delhi, Sep 18 - A narrow patch of forest, critical for movement of tigers and elephants in Nainital district of Uttarakhand, has been blocked due to an infrastructure project resulting in a serious man-animal conflict, conservation organisations said here Friday.

The narrow patch of forest across the Gola river near Lalkuan area is the only critical corridor for movement of tigers and elephants between Terai Central and Terai East forest divisions.

With the destruction of this vital corridor the entire Terai Arc Landscape stretching from the Yamuna river near Saharanpur in the west to the Bagmati river near the Chitwan National Park in Nepal in the East has been divided into two zones.

The destruction of this corridor has affected free movement of wild elephants, thereby increasing crop damage and human killing on both sides of the corridor, said a joint statement issued by the Corbett Foundation, Wildlife Protection Society of India, Wildlife Trust of India (WTI) and Worldwide Fund for Nature (WWF)-India.

The corridor, identified by the Wildlife Institute of India (WII) in 2003, featured prominently in a book, 'Right of Passage', published by the WTI in 2005.