First phase of National Tiger Census begins in Madhya Pradesh
Bhopal, February 6: The first phase of All India Tiger Estimation (AITE) began on Monday in all tiger reserves of the state. For the next seven days in this phase, the direct counting of pug marks of tigers, leopards and other wild animals and herbivorous animals will be conducted.
Volunteers and subject experts of various states including Gujarat, Karnataka, Andhra Pradesh etc. are taking part in the National Tiger Census. Volunteers have been trained before counting. They include women and senior citizens also.
The volunteers desirous of taking part in the next phase can get registered on the Forest Department website. The decision to include Volunteers has been taken to ensure participation of general public in wild life management, increase quality of collected figures and bring about transparency.
This time the tiger estimation will be hi-tech in the state as forest ground staffers have been equipped with smartphones having ecological App. Details and observations will be uploaded to the ecological module of the mobile app, – M-STriPES – Monitoring System for Tiger-Intensive Protection and Ecological Status developed by WII. M-STriPES and GPS devices will help forest guards to collect data along with pictures. The data collected by guard is automatically transferred to a central server.
The survey is conducted every four years in all forest areas in the country duly following the scientific method formulated by Nation Tiger Conservation Authority (NTCA) and Wildlife Institute of India (WII). Though it is a nationwide exercise, it is not synchronised and hence different states will carry out the assessment on different dates.