Hi-tech mode to count NE big cats

TIGER COUNT

*     14,000 camera traps to be used

*    3200 m altitude of the highest spot under survey (Aruchal Pradesh)

*    MSTrIPES mobile app to track, upload and geo-tag images

BY OUR STAFF REPORTER

GUWAHATI, Feb 25: The ongoing tionwide tiger census is covering the North East intensively by using hi-tech gadgets to find out robust big cats numbers from the region.

An official in Assam Forest department on Sunday told this correspondent that the North East was not adequately surveyed in the past tiger census due to various reasons including iccessibility and hostile geographical terrains.

“The All India Tiger Estimation (AITE), 2018 under the aegis of the Wildlife Wing, Department of Environment Forests & Climate Change which started recently, intends to cover the North East intensively by using more cameras and gathering evidences like tiger scats from the ground,” the official said, adding that for the first time tiger census will cover galand.

The Wildlife Wing, Department of Environment Forests & Climate Change has already started imparting training to forest officials, forest guards and other technical staffs of galand forest department as how to engage themselves successfully in the first ever tiger census being conducted in the State.

The last census was conducted in 2014. It had estimated the country’s tiger population at 2,226, up from 1,706 in 2010. Most experts said the growth trend to continue across India and they are particularly enthusiastic about possibility of discovering new tiger habitats in the North East. The results are likely to be announced early part of 2019.

Firoz Ahmed, tiger expert of Aaranyak, an intertiolly acclaimed NGO told this correspondent that it is a really good news that the 2018 tiger census will intensively cover North East. He said the tiol Tiger Conservation Authority must now focus on those tiger reserves where there is scope of increasing the population, like mdapha.

Ahmed, however, said the existing tiger carrying capacity in the world famed Kaziranga tiol Park is between 100-105 and the population must not increase much beyond this point for healthy survival of the animal.

Kaziranga, which became a tiger reserve in 2007, is spread over Golaghat, gaon and Sonitpur districts. According to the 2014 report, Kaziranga had the highest tiger density (per 100 square km) of 12.72.

On other hand, there is a significant upsurge in the population of tigers in two other tiol parks in the State. The recent census report received from the famed Mas tiol Park and Orang tiol Park show a good rise in the number of tigers, where the presence of 30 tigers was recorded in Mas , 28 was the figure that came from Orang.