Foresters train vet doctors to deal with wild animals straying into AP villages

Vijayawada: The AP forest department has come up with a plan to deal with wild animals like elephants, tigers, leopards, sloth bear etc that stray into human habitations in the fringe villages near forests. These are attacking people and destroying properties in several parts of the state.

Additional principal chief conservator of forests (wildlife management) Shanti Priya Pande said, “As part of the plan, the department is roping in veterinary assistant surgeons from the animal husbandry department or from municipal bodies and providing them a two-day orientation programme involving wildlife experts like Dr M. Navin Kumar from Hyderabad and Dr N. Manoharan from Tamil Nadu.”

The forest department does not have veterinary doctors except in zoos.

The assistant veterinary surgeons would undergo training on how to rescue the straying and stranded wild animals, using darts to tranquilise them, providing treatment to their injuries, collection of samples of blood for testing to ascertain whether they have any disease or infections, vaccination for anthrax, avian influenza etc.

Till now, foresters had to get the vet doctors from the zoos in Visakhapatnam or Tirupati to handle the situations like tranquilising such wild animals or caging them, but getting the doctors took time.

The forest authorities are also planning to keep one or two trained vet doctors in every district.

The orientation programme to a batch of vet doctors completed in Visakhapatnam recently and such sessions take place in Tirupati on January 27 and 28 and in Atmakur on January 30 and 31.