Odisha’s own tiger count exercise to commence from Oct 10
BHUBANESWAR: Odisha government, which did not accept the big cat estimation report of the Centre, will launch its own tiger estimation exercise from October 10.PCCF (Wildlife) and chief wildlife warden SK Popli told The New Indian Express that the field exercise will commence from October 10 after completion of the ongoing training programme of the forest officials. Three scientists from the Wildlife Institute of India (WII) have already carried out the training of master trainers and imparted handholding training to around 20 officials at Chandka Godibari camp.
“These officers will start the field training after which the field exercise will be launched. Camera traps will be installed from November 1 and the data analysed in January. The final report is expected to be received by January 31,” Popli said.
He said while around 700 cameras had been used for the All India Tiger Estimation (AITE) exercise, the Forest department plans to use around 1,000 cameras this time.
“This apart, we have set aside 75 days for the camera trap exercise against the usual time of around 40 days. We have also decided to use one camera in more than one place wherever needed,” Popli said.
The chief wildlife warden said Similipal landscape including entire Mayurbhanj district, Hadgarh sanctuary, Ghatagaon forest in Keonjhar and other forest landscapes having possibility of tiger occupancy will be included in the survey. He, however said unlike the AITE the Forest department will not adopt a detailed exercise and won’t use any model.
“Our purpose is only to ascertain the minimum number of tigers in the state and what are the new tiger habitats and tiger occupancy forests. Accordingly, the scat analysis and camera traps will be used for the head count,” Popli said.
Notably, the state government has decided to launch the exercise after the latest AITE 2022 revealed that the state’s tiger count has reported a further drop from 28 in 2018 to 20 in 2022. Besides, 16 of these tigers were found in Similipal Tiger Reserve which implies tiger population has been wiped out from most of the other forests in the state.
The Satkosia landscape, where country’s first big-cat translocation project had been launched, was also found to be tiger-less in the AITE exercise carried out by the National Tiger Conservation Authority (NTCA).