COIMBATORE: The forest department with the help of TANGEDCO, will soon explore the possibility of installing a windmill to give power supply to Konalaru Kudil, the camp of Anti Poaching Watchers (APW), situated at Akkamalai grass hills near Valparai in Anamalai Tiger Reserve (ATR).
Konalaru Kudil is a roof-tiled building spread over seven cents which is used as an Anti Poaching Watchers camp (APW) where the field level staff stay during their patrol duty. Though the building was constructed during the British period, it does not have regular power supply till date. Solar power is used at the kudil, but it is not effective, sources said.
A senior forest official of ATR told TNIE, “Supriya Sahu, additional chief secretary, environment, climate change and Forest, Tamil Nadu, visited Akkamalai grass hills, which is habitat for the Nilgiri Tahr, a few days ago and checked the feasibility for the project.
The project is in a very early stage and we are in discussions only to set up a windmill and tapping of solar energy will not be effective on all the days due to lack of sun light. The project will be executed after getting experts’ advice without affecting the wild animal movement.
The renewable energy will be used to power lights in four rooms along with ports for charging mobile phones. “Apart from four lights inside the building, fixing lights outside the building is also necessary as glowing of lights would prevent visits by wild elephants. We don’t need fan since we are experiencing chill weather most of the time in a year,” said a field level staff.
“We are necessitated to give power supply to Konalaru kudil since the facility will be helpful for experts and researchers etc who could spend several days there to study the Nilgiri Tahr which is found in abundance here and also in the Eravikulam National Park which is eight km away,” the official said.
He added “We will soon start removing invasive species from Akkamalai grass hills as they can pose threat to the free movement of the Nilgiri Tahr.”