Mumbai’s SGNP to get wildlife forensic laboratory by March 2022

The wildlife forensic laboratory at SGNP in Mumbai will be set up along the lines of a similar facility scheduled to be inaugurated in Nagpur this week, on October 22, by the police department

A proposed wildlife forensic laboratory at Sanjay Gandhi National Park (SGNP), which will be equipped to carry out DNA analysis of animals, based on swab and scat samples, is expected to become operational by March 2022 after a considerable delay, Maharashtra’s chief wildlife warden has said. The lab will be set up along the lines of a similar facility scheduled to be inaugurated in Nagpur this week, on October 22, by the police department.

A proposed wildlife forensic laboratory at Sanjay Gandhi National Park (SGNP), Mumbai, will be equipped to carry out DNA analysis of animals. (HT PHOTO)

This development, which has now been integrated into the Maharashtra State Wildlife Action Plan 2031 (sanctioned by the chief minister during a State Board for Wildlife meeting last week), has been pending since 2019 when the state forest department first proposed a dedicated facility for wildlife forensics in Mumbai.

Sunil Limaye, Maharashtra’s chief wildlife warden, said that such forensic capabilities have so far been lacking across the state, where wildlife crimes and conflict are both par for the course.

“The wildlife forensic laboratory at Sanjay Gandhi National Park (SGNP), equipped to carry out DNA analysis of animals, will be operational by March 2022. At the moment, whenever we need to conduct any forensic analysis of swabs or scat samples, we send them to labs in Jabalpur or Hyderabad. The process can take months and is a major impediment toward resolving wildlife crime and conflict cases. With our own facilities, we can create a database of vulnerable animals through scat samples. This can come in handy later. Say there is a poaching case where some animal parts have been recovered, or some tiger or leopard has attacked a human, we can identify the concerned animal in a matter of days and respond appropriately,” Limaye said, emphasizing that such a facility would lead to faster resolution of conflict and perhaps faster conviction in case of wildlife crimes.

SGNP officials have already identified a location within the park premises for setting up the laboratory, which will be done at an approximate budget of ₹3.5 crore. “We are in process of acquiring the funds,” Limaye added.

The laboratory’s expenses are expected to be met from the park’s annual public ledger. The laboratory will be able to cater to the needs of wildlife monitoring teams not just from Mumbai, but from across western Maharashtra and also from other adjoining states, such as Gujarat and Karnataka, which are home to vulnerable animals such as Asiatic lions and black panthers. In addition to the forensic lab, a second priority project for the wildlife department under the Maharashtra State Wildlife Action Plan includes creating a comprehensive database of all wildlife crimes in Mumbai (and across other territorial forest ranges in the state) over the last 10 years by December.

“We have already started work on this over the last month. While poaching and killing of wildlife, particularly terrestrial mammals like tigers, was found to be the most predominant crime in eastern Maharashtra, in Mumbai and the Konkan region it is possession and trafficking of protected reptiles and birds, like sand boas, monitor lizards and even marine animals like turtles. We have enlisted the help of the Wildlife Trust of India and the Kerala forest department in creating this database as they have been working on a similar initiative in Kerala for the past five years, which will allow us to monitor the progress of individual cases of wildlife crime. At the moment the data is scattered across range offices and we do not have a centralized database. We have already established dedicated wildlife crime control cells, one each in Nagpur and Mumbai, for whom this database will prove extremely useful,” said Pandurang Pakhale, assistant conservator of forests, who is leading this exercise.