BHUBANESWAR: Odisha is gearing up for the next big cat census in the State and this time, more forests will be covered. The census which took place in around 15 forest divisions last year, will cover 20 divisions this year.
The National Tiger Conservation Authority (NTCA) and the State Forest, Environment and Climate Change (FE&CC) department have started preparations for the 2022 survey.
Officials of Wildlife wing of the Forest department said the tiger census in Odisha will be carried out in two reserves - Similipal and Satkosia - and other forests including Sunabeda wildlife sanctuary, a proposed tiger reserve.
With the State’s tiger population witnessing no growth since 2014, officials are hoping that the number increases this time. The census of 2018 had put Odisha’s tiger population at 28, same as 2014.
PCCF (Wildlife) Shashi Paul said a preliminary meeting has been convened by the NTCA for all India Tiger Estimation - 2022 and the training of forest personnel in the State for the census will start very soon.
The PCCF Wildlife said that the census will include sign survey, pug mark count and camera trapping. It will include use of the mobile application called Monitoring System for Tiger-Intensive Protection and Ecological Status (M-STrIPES) to make the census error free.
The app was used for the first time in the 2018 census. Training of field staff will be completed by September end.
After completion of training, the Phase-I data collection will begin in forest divisions from October. In the second phase Wildlife Institute of India will compile the data with geographic information systems (GIS) to identify potential sites with carnivorous density for installation of cameras.
In the third phase, the camera traps would be installed and the divisions would have to submit the captured data by January for analysis. The State now has around 800 cameras and efforts are on to procure more to cover the increased area this year.