Rajahmundry: All India tiger census will be taken up probably during January next in order find out the tiger population in wildlife.
As part of preparations for carrying out census which is a ritual in every four years, forest authorities have carried out a two-day workshop for senior forest officials recently in Hyderabad and they in turn are organising training programme to the staff at forest range-level.
The trained staff with the support from local villagers will find out the prey population and the growth of vegetation and the tracks of the tigers.
This initial exercise will help the forest authorities to find out the presence of the tigers in the forest area as the carnivorous animals are dependent upon the herbivores which in turn depend upon thick growth of vegetation for their survival.
The tigers also learnt to be taking regular tracks while moving in the forests and the authorities will follow the tracks and find out the footprints of the tigers.
Later, the authorities carry out direct count of the tigers by installing ‘camera traps’ at places like water holes and normal tracks where the tigers visit frequently.
The cameras will be having battery back-up to last for two to three days and the field staff will replace the discharged batteries to keep the cameras operational continuously to capture the presence of the tigers.
The forest staff will also find out the location of the tigers in the forests and keep watch on the normal tracks to find out their movement.
All the data thus acquired will be put in a series of formats and will be sent to the Wildlife Institute of India at Dehradun for analysis and after completing the analysis collected from all over the country, the WII authorities will release the data pertaining to the tiger census.
Based on the previous data available with the forest authorities, one tiger and four panthers are existing in the Papikondalu wildlife sanctuary at present and only after completing the census, any change in the tiger population can be known.
District forest officer T.V. Subba Reddy said, “We are conducting training session to the forest staff at present and we will take up census of tiger population shortly.”
