A national depository of tiger pictures mooted

There will soon be a national depository of tiger pictures in the wild for better protection of the big cat.

Updated on: May 2, 2012, 20:15:18 IST

Hindustan Times | By Chetan Chauhan, New Delhi

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There will soon be a national depository of tiger pictures in the wild for better protection of the big cat.

The National Tiger Conservation Authority (NTCA) has decided to set up the database of the pictures taken through camera trap methodology. Under this methodology, cameras automatically take picture of animals whenever they come in their focus area.

The authority already has pictures of 650 tigers taken during tiger estimation in 2010and expects so get hundreds of more pictures from NGOs such as Bangalore based Centre for Wildlife Studies and Assam based Aaranyak.

Environment minister Jayanthi Natarajan on Wednesday released Aaranyak’s compilation of around 115 tiger pictures taken in Kaziranga Tiger Reserve in Assam. She also released a book Wildlife Management written by NTCA director Rajesh Gopal.

Gopal later told HT that the depository will help forest officials in tracking the tigers on yearly basis and monitor movement of big cats from one tiger reserve to another. “It will an aid for tiger protection,” he said.

Photographic database of tigers can be reliable as individual tigers can be identified on basis of stripes. Like finger-prints of human beings are not same, stripes are also unique to a big cat.

The NTCA has called a meeting of field directors of 41 tiger reserves in India to discuss new initiatives including the depository. Among the issues listed for discussion is creation of Special Tiger Protection Force. Of the 13 tiger states, only Karnataka has set up the specialized force to protect tigers.

“We will persuade all the states to raise, arm and deploy the Special Tiger Protection Force (STPF),” Natarajan said, while raising the important issue of tiger protection.

India has more than 50 % of world’s tiger population spread across 13 countries but still poaching in different parts of the country is rampant. Of the 30 tiger deaths reported in 2012, 17 are said to be cases of poaching.

The NTCA has tried use of satellite based technology called eyeball to provide around the clock protection to tigers. Corbett tiger reserve in Uttarakhand has employed the technology to monitor some of its tigers.

SETBACK TO TIGERS

In a big setback to declare Sathyamangalam forests, once abode of sandalwood smuggler Veerappan, around 1.5 lakh villagers living there have objected to the Central government’s bid to declare the forest as a tiger reserve. The forest was declared a sanctuary after Veerappan was killed in a police encounter.

In a resolution adopted on Tuesday, the villagers described the bid to clear the forest as tiger reserve as in violation of the laws and denial of the right of people to life and livelihood. They demanded withdrawal of the state government’s recommendation to declare the forest as a Tiger Reserve.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Chetan Chauhan
Chetan Chauhan is the National Affairs Editor looking into all aspects of news and features from across India. A Chevening scholar with over three decades of experience in reporting and news management, Chetan has extensively covered all important aspects of the social sector, political economy, environment and climate change nationally and internationally. He did a journalism course at the Reuters Institute of Journalism in Oxford and Digital Media training at Nanyang Technological University in Singapore. He started as a reporter with The Statesman in 1996 and joined the Hindustan Times in 2000 in the metro bureau covering environment, crime and Delhi politics. He covered hot local news, from the Jessica Lal murder case to the rebellion of Delhi Congress MLAs against then Chief Minister Sheila Dikshit, to the replacement of toxic vehicle fuel with cleaner compressed natural gas (CNG) in the national capital. Some of his stories on air pollution became part of the Supreme Court’s landmark MC Mehta versus Government of India case in the National Capital Region (NCR), forcing the government to take corrective measures. As part of the national political bureau since 2004, he covered important central sectors such as environment, education, social justice, labour, rural development, water resources, renewable energy, agriculture, broadcasting and the Planning Commission for more than a decade producing several exclusive and investigative breaking stories. His specialisation is the environment, having covered at least a dozen United Nations global conferences on climate change, biodiversity and wildlife including climate summits in Paris, Copenhagen and Bali. He also covered India’s two five-year plans ---11th and 12th and reported on drafting and execution of right based laws such as Right to Education, Right to Information and rural job guarantee law, MG-NREGA, now being introduced in new format as VG-RAM-G Act. He has in-depth knowledge of social sector issues. He was one of the first to report on tigers vanishing from Sariska and Panna wildlife reserves in 2004 and 2008, respectively, leading to the setting up of the National Tiger Conservation Authority (NTCA) and the introduction of stringent penal provisions for poaching. He has written extensively on the rising human-animal conflict in India and the degradation of India’s biodiversity hotspots because of mining and other activities. Since 2004, Chetan has covered Parliament comprehensively and participated in training on the nuanced coverage of Parliament proceedings. He has travelled extensively across India to cover national and provincial elections since 1998, especially in the Hindi heartland states, considered India’s road to power. He writes a regular column for Hindustan Times, Ecostani, on important national politics, economy, Himalayan ecology and environmental issues. His other responsibilities include providing inputs for edits and edit page articles for the publication, apart from managing news flow from across India.Read More

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