BHUBANESWAR: Forest and Environment Minister Pradip Kumar Amit on Tuesday asked officials of his department not to suppress deaths of wild animals, jumbos in particular, and urged them to focus on arrest man-animal conflict for effective wildlife management in the state.
Addressing divisional forest officers (DFOs)’ conference here, the minister instructed that wild animal deaths must be reported immediately to senior authorities as and when they occur to deal with the situation effectively. The minister explained how one lie could lead to difficult fallouts for the entire wildlife management system.
Terming as unfortunate the recent killing of a boy allegedly by a leopard in Nuapada district, Amat asked forest officials to work sensibly to prevent such mishaps. Forest officials must be sensitive towards people’s emotions during a conflict situation and take adequate safety measures for people living in villages surrounding forests, he said.
The DFOs, during the conference, were asked to build contacts at the grassroots and take local communities into confidence to get ground level intelligence on wildlife movement and reduce man-animal conflict. They were also asked to focus on creating alternative livelihood opportunities for locals in forest fringe villages to reduce their dependency on forests which in turn will also help in conflict management.
Implementation of government schemes for forest and wildlife management including ‘Jana Suraksha Gaja Raksha’, deployment of ‘Gaja Sathis’, progress of ongoing tiger estimation programme in the state, issues pertaining to wildlife crime investigation as well as forest fire management in the ensuing wildfire season were discussed at length in the meeting.
Plantation programme of the government under different schemes, development of Nagar Vans and convergence with line departments for implementation of livelihood improvement programmes were also discussed at length. Additional chief secretary of Forest and Environment department Satyabrata Sahu and PCCF Debidutta Biswal also spoke.
New PCCF today!
With PCCF Wildlife and Chief Wildlife Warden SK Popli retiring, the state government is likely to name a new PCCF Wildlife by Wednesday. Popli was felicitated for contribution in effective wildlife management in the state during his tenure at the DFOs’ meet