BENGALURU: The Karnataka Forest Department will undertake the much-awaited field survey for the national tiger census in January. In the meantime, forest officials have intensified the camera trap assessment for the census.
As per the first drafted schedule, the field survey and the camera trap assessments were to be done in parallel. But it was halted, first due to shortage of cameras, and then because of technical issues on the M-Stripe App, which was to be used for the field survey. And most importantly, everything had to be rescheduled because of the untimely and unprecedented rainfall.
Forest officials said a decision has been taken that camera trap assessment will be completed first for which 900 cameras are already in place. “Since the assessment is crucial, the exercise is being done first instead of wasting time waiting for rectification of the M-Stripe App,” an official said.
The App is to be used as per orders of the Ministry of Environment, Forests and Climate Change, and is aimed to cut down human intervention as far as possible. “But it has many errors and bugs which needs to be corrected. We have had several rounds of meetings with the ministry to iron out the issues and make corrections to the App.
It is due to the App that the census exercise has not yet started. The ministry said that it will be ready in another 10-15 days (likely mid- December). But trials will be needed to be done on the ground before the App can be used,” the official said.