MYSORE: BRT Wildlife Sanctuary director S Lingaraja said on Tuesday that granite quarries around the tiger reserve are causing disturbance to the wildlife.
Delivering a talk on ‘Challenges in Tiger Conservation’ at Sri Chamarajendra Zoological Gardens on account of ‘World Tiger Day’, he said there are 24 granite quarries around BRT Wildlife Sanctuary.
“The functioning of one of these quarries was stopped after the High Court passed an order to do so considering the impact of it on wildlife,” he said.
He said poaching is the biggest challenge in tiger conservation and nomads from Haryana and Madhya Pradesh are well-trained to kill tiger and many were caught in the BRT a few months ago.
A local court convicted them in a year after they were arrested by the then RFO K T Boraiah. This apart, tradition of sacrificing animals in Chamarajanagar district is another challenge before the Forest Department, he said.
Lingaraja said they recently seized 20 country made guns from a forest fringe village.
“Some villagers poison wild animals. Tribals are troubling us by setting fire to the forest to grow ganja,” he said.
He said he provided WiFi facility in all corners of the sanctuary to enable forest personnel to update their work on a daily basis and introduced biometric system of attendance in all anti-poaching camps of BRT to ensure punctuality, he said.
R Gokul, director of Rajiv Gandhi National Park, said there are 27 anti-poaching camps and 198 cameras have been installed to monitor tigers in the national park, he said.
He said Karnataka has 6,500 elephants and there are 1,300 elephants alone in Nagarahole.