COIMBATORE: Forest staff who are to be involved in census of tigers and other wild animals will be using the advanced Monitoring System for Tigers: Intensive Protection and Ecological Status (M-Stripes/MSTrIPES) app.
Earlier, they had been documenting the signs of all wild animals, along with GPS tags, in forms and then uploading them on the app. Now, the staff have been trained to operate the app and they will feed all the information related to the census, which will be conducted as part of the All India Tiger Estimation (AITE) Survey 2026 from Wednesday in Anamalai Tiger Reserve (ATR).
An official of the Tamil Nadu Forest Department said, "The staff who are engaged in the enumeration of tigers, megaherbivores and arboreal animals, along with assessing the trees, grasses and shrubs and feed that information in the updated app using GPS tags, along with the distance of enumerators walking in the transect line, etc., in the app itself. This app is easy to use and handy for feeding the information at the earliest. The first day would be a training session, and the last day would entail compilation of the data.”
Parallely, large carnivore and megaherbivore sign surveys will be held between January 8 and 10, followed by a prey estimation survey for the next three days, from January 11 to 13.
In ATR, which is spread over 1,108 square km (958.5 sq.km core areas and 150.48 s.km buffer zone) across Coimbatore and Tiruppur districts, more than 340 staff from eight forest ranges will be engaged in the survey in 115 transect lines from Wednesday. The survey will conclude on January 14.
"Apart from checking indirect signs of tigers and leopards, such as scratch marks on trees, we are also enumerating arboreal animals such as the bonnet macaque and Indian giant squirrel, apart from assessing their pellets," said a forest staff involved in the census.
According to sources, after the previous census in 2022, 57-58 tigers were identified in ATR as well as the adjacent Parambikulam Tiger Reserve (PTR) in Palakkad district of Kerala. While 25 tigers were found in ATR, seven to eight tigers were found inhabiting both ATR and PTR.
Forest officials are hopeful that the numbers of tigers in ATR likely to go up with this survey in ATR alone since forest managers have found tiger presence in Kolumam forest range, which is the buffer zone of ATR, and along with newborn tiger cubs in Ulanthy forest range. Sources said the number of tigers in ATR increased from 10 in 2014 to 15 in 2018 and 25 in 2022.