By IANS,
New Delhi: With the tiger population dwindling in the country, the Indian government Wednesday launched a hi-tech monitoring system to ensure transparency in tiger protection in the country.
The system ‘M-Stripes’, launched by the environment ministry, is a collaboration between the National Tiger Conservation Authority (NTCA), Wildlife Institute of India (WII) and the Zoological Society of London.
The GPS-based system will provide patrolling protocols, recording wildlife crimes and ecological monitoring. It is also a customised software for storage, analysis, retrieval and reporting of data related to tiger monitoring.
Under the system, the forest guard would have to daily fill in information about area patrolled and number of tigers spotted. The information will be passed by the beat officer to forest range officer, followed by division officer to state government and the NTCA.
“The system will bring more transparency in tiger monitoring and will strengthen the anti-poaching drive. We know that till now lot of patrolling data presented by forest officials was doctored but the system will put a hold on it,” Environment Minister Jairam Ramesh told reporters here.
As a pilot initiative, it is proposed to implement the system within two months at six tiger reserves – Corbett in Uttarakhand, Ranthambhore in Rajasthan, Kanha in Madhya Pradesh, Bhadra in Karnataka, Anamalai in Tamil Nadu and Nagarjunasagar Srisailam in Andhra Pradesh.
“The system will provide forecasting of detrimental events like poaching or habitat degradation and, thus, will provide scope for timely safeguards. We will soon extend the system to other 33 tiger reserves in the country,” Y.V. Jhala of WII said.
The Zoological Society of London successfully implemented the project in Kenya and Nepal.
“The system has helped in checking poaching activities in forests in Nepal and Kenya. The system can be used for monitoring other wildlife animals also,” said Raj Amin of the Zoological Society of London.
There has been a sharp decline in the number of tigers in India, with only 1,411 of them left, according to official estimates.