NILGIRIS: Following the death of 10 tigers including a male which was killed due to poisoning within 34 days, officials of Mudumalai Tiger Reserve (MTR) have completed installing over 50 hidden camera traps at new places in three different forest ranges in MTR on Saturday.
According to officials, the traps have been installed in Mukurthi, Nilakottai and Theppakkadu forest ranges, which are core areas of the MTR, especially to monitor the movement of poachers and ensure free movement of wild animals.
“As part of conservation and to prevent giving tip off to poachers, names of places where the cameras have been set up have not been revealed,” officials said.
Forest range officer of Mukurthi National Park Yuvaraj Kumar said, “We have set up camouflaged cameras and installed GPS to mark the places.
Each camera has a battery life of 20 days and we will retrieve the chip from the cameras and hand it over to the Deputy Director office at Theppakkadu tiger monitoring centre to monitor the records. We have set up cameras at suspicious places by identifying the possible entry of poachers and all these steps are being taken as the counter effect of the recent tiger deaths in Nilgiris district.”
According to sources, over 45 field staff such as anti poaching watchers, beat forest guards, along with range officer conducted combing operations in these three forest ranges in the last one week and did not find any evidence of human intrusion.