BENGALURU: A day after the confusion hovered with Bandipur Tiger Reserve conducting the tiger census in a hush-hush manner without informing the higher ups, the forest department officials said the census is likely to be held from October 20 or 25.
“Training is being completed and the calender for each reserve is being drawn, based on the availability of camera traps and field staff. It is likely the field survey exercise of the census will start from October 20 or 25 because it has to be completed by December and sent to Wildlife Institute of India and National Tiger Conservation Authority,” a senior forest department official said.
Meanwhile, staffers at MM Hills are gearing up to start the exercise of the camera trap survey from October 14. “Since we have procured the cameras from other reserves for the training, we want to do the exercise before sending them to other reserves and areas for assessment,” said the official.
In case of BRT Tiger Reserve, the officials explained, “Since last year the annual internal assessment could not be done, the exercise was done in June-July. This was discussed with NTCA and they assured that there would not be a need to repeat the exercise, unless any errors are found. So while in other reserves the assessment will be done, it in unlikely to be done in BRT, but it will be done in non-tiger presence areas.”
Heads of some other reserves are waiting for the Dasara festivities to end before staff returns in full strength and clearing of transact lines is done so that herbivore and carnivore assessment is done accurately. Officials in Nagarhole, Bhadra, Kudremukh and Kali tiger reserve are checking the nuances of the app before it is put to use for the census exercise.