BENGALURU: With the lockdown being lifted, vehicles are back on the roads and the pace has gone back to pre-Covid days. Apart from city roads, vehicular traffic has increased along forest patches, due to which many road kills are being reported across Karnataka forest areas.
To ensure stern measures are taken to control the movement of vehicles, and to prevent wild animals being run over by reckless drivers, the Karnataka forest department is assessing the movement of vehicles passing through Nagarahole Tiger Reserve and working on introducing time-stamped tickets to check the speed of vehicles passing through the crucial forest patch.
The staffers of Nagarahole have been assessing the movement of vehicles since the first lockdown was imposed, and found that 11 animals had died in the Anechowkur range and eight in Hunsur of Nagarahole.
They have now decided to time track vehicles moving on the Hunsur-Gonikoppa stretch (NH-90), where vehicles pass through Alluru gate, and Periyapatna-Gonikoppa stretch (SH- 21) where vehicles pass through Boodithittu gate.
“We have assessed the time each type of vehicle takes to travel a 15-km stretch on these roads. It has been noted that the vehicles take very long or they pass very fast. Both are dangerous to them and to wildlife. Hence, to bring in some control, these tickets will be introduced,” a senior forest official said.