RAIPUR: The Chhattisgarh forest department has developed an application to collate data on movement of elephants received from trackers and alert villagers about the movement of elephants in their neighbbourhood.
“The application objective is to supplement the “munaadi” done by elephants trackers so that every person in the affected village is well informed of the presence of elephants in their vicinity through calls and messages on their mobile phone,” said V Srinavasa Rao, in-charge principal chief conservator of forests, Chhattisgarh.
The application has been developed jointly by FMIS (Forest Management Information System) and Wildlife Wing.
Officials said the elephant trackers under the state’s Haathi Mitra Dal scheme will provide the information about the location of elephants, behaviour and other attributes.
Varun Jain, deputy director of Udanti Tiger Reserve, said: “The mobile numbers and GPS location of villagers of the elephant affected areas are being registered using the alert and tracking app. This is being done so that whenever the elephant is within a radius of 10 km , they will get call, SMS, WhatsApp Alerts”.
“The villagers will need to register their mobile numbers with GPS location through the beat guards concerned to receive the alerts,” Jain said.
{{/usCountry}}“The villagers will need to register their mobile numbers with GPS location through the beat guards concerned to receive the alerts,” Jain said.
{{/usCountry}}Officials said that application has various features such as tracking elephant route using time period filter, and enables users to filter elephant herds and routes. The application can be used to collect information and send alerts about other animals as well.
In December 2022, the Chhattisgarh forest department said that human-elephant conflict in the state led to death of 77 elephants and 296 people in five years. The state’s forests have about 300 wild elephants.