KOCHI: A Malayali Forest Service officer of Tripura cadre has made Kerala proud by winning Tripura chief minister’s award for the best gazetted officer. S Soorya Narayan has won the award for devising mobile applications to document afforestation, enforcement and wildlife sighting.
Hailing from Thiruvananthapuram, Soorya Narayan is now serving as district forest officer of West Tripura District. The award-winning projects were implemented when he was the deputy conservator of forests (IT and Statistics) at the forest headquarters. He shares the award with his senior Amit Shukla, the then chief conservator of forests who is now serving as director in the Department of Drinking Water and Sanitation.
According to Narayan, sheer necessity forced them to develop the apps. “The department undertakes large scale afforestation activities, mostly bamboo, to provide a livelihood for forest dwellers. An average of 3,000 to 5,000 hectares are covered under the programme. But lack of proper records come in the way of proper upkeep and utilisation,” he said.
The Tribhuvan application now documents projects with geotagging of plantation boundaries. It helps in harvesting mature bamboo in time and ensuring a continuous supply of raw material for livelihood programmes.
The absence of readily retrievable information was one major problem faced by the enforcement officers to devise strategies against wildlife poaching and smuggling of forest produce. The Forest Incident Reporting Module (FIRM) app helps officers get information on previous incidents at their fingertips.
“Information can be retrieved using different parameters like poaching of a particular species or vulnerable areas. That would come in handy for the smart deployment of guards,” Narayan said.
“Selected photos are posted on our social media pages. They make conservationists and nature lovers happy,” he says. Narayan was also involved in developing the app “Aranya Jala Darpan” to manage
check-dams.
Big dreams
Narayan, 33, hails from Kuravankonam in Thiruvananthapuram. He is a BTech graduate from the Govt Engineering College, Barton Hil and a 2014 batch Indian Forest Service officer.