Wildlife census to begin

Rajahmundry: Forest authorities are going to take up a tiger census by scouting over four lakh hectares forest land to find out both carnivores and herbivores spread over in both the Godavari districts based on the guidelines issued by the Wildlife Institute of India, Dehradun, beginning from Monday up to December 21.

In East Godavari, the forest authorities are having a forest cover in about 3.3 lakh hectares including part of Papikonda national park spread over in 29,000 hectares land. The entire stretch of the forest land is divided into 95 beats and 95 teams are going to be deployed to carry out the census. Each team will be headed by a forest beat officer and a local tribal will also be involved to help the forest personnel to locate the wildlife.

The forest authorities have already trained the forest personnel from the rank of range officers, section officers, forest beat officers, assistant forest beat officers and others on how to carry out the census of the wildlife. The WII has given six proformas and the forest personnel are supposed to scout the forest lands and fill  them up.

The personnel are supposed to look for thick vegetation, presence of herbivores and carnivores, water bodies, habitat, pug marks, excreta and other indications of the presence of the wildlife. 

Forest authorities noticed the presence of only panthers in the forest area so far and there are no traces of the presence of tigers. The authorities will keep camera traps near the water bodies in certain forest areas where the presence of tigers is felt more like Srisailam Tiger Reserve and this will help them find out the population of the tigers.

But in the case of forest area in Godavari districts, the forest authorities are not adopting this practice and they are going by the other indications to find out their presence and learn about their population.

In West Godavari, the authorities started the tiger census in the forest cover spread over in 82,000 hectares area covering parts of Eluru, Jangareddygudem, Polavaram and others on Friday.

The authorities have set up 43 beats in the entire stretch of the forest cover and 43 teams headed by a forest beat officer for each team were pressed into service.

The data collected in the proformas will be forwarded to the WII for consolidation and analysis and the final report will be released by it at the national level in about six months’ time.

East Godavari district forest officer (Territorial) T.V. Subba Reddy said, “The census helps us to generate data about wildlife and keep tab on illegal activities like poaching of wild animals.”