Central Chronicle , Saturday, May 21, 2005

Correspondent : Agencies

Bhopal, May 20 Amidst fresh steps to end poaching and to correct flaws in census procedures, a comprehensive evaluation system of tiger population is being worked out by integrating conventional pugmark tracing with modern methods of camera traps and digital imaging at three tiger reserves of Madhya Pradesh. "If the experiment, being conducted by the Wildlife Institute of India (WII), Dehra Dun, and director, Project Tiger, at tiger reserves in Kanha, Satpura and Pench, comes out successful, the technique would be standardised and used for tiger census in November 2005," state Principal Chief Conservator of Forests (PCCF) P B Gangopadhyay said. Apart from pugmarks tracings, plaster casts and gait measurements, the system uses camera traps to estimate population of tigers, he said adding pugmark census and population estimates of camera trap would be compared to arrive at a final figure. Digital images of pugmarks would be taken to map tigers in the protected area, the PCCF said adding these images can be plotted on Global Information System (GIS) module to prepare a 'Tiger Atlas of India', one of the plans of Project Tiger, which integrates satellite data and digitised data. The last census showed presence of 712 tigers in the state but questions were raised on procedures of big cat population evaluation along with allegations of poaching. Similar charges had caused a row over tigers in Panna tiger reserve where census was carried out using conventional technique - based on enumerators' ability to identify individual tigers from pugmarks and sightings by forest staff. This had prompted the government to initiate a slew of measures to strengthen the drive against poachers, besides ushering in activities of the tiger cell in monitoring anti-poaching operations. As many as 28 cases of tiger poaching have been registered since 1998, Gangopadhyay said adding poachers were also booked in 76 cases for killing leopards, majority of which were detected in seoni district.

SOURCE : Central Chronicle, Saturday, May 21, 2005