By Ramesh Marulkar
The first e-surveillance project is coming up in Navegaon-Nagzira Tiger Reserve (NNTR), Gondia district,in Maharashtra for monitoring movements of wild animals as well as human beings indulging in forest offences.
Forest Department is making efforts to ensure that the project starts functioning before coming monsoon. It has already received an amount of Rs 7 crore from National Tiger Conservation Authority, New Delhi, for the purpose, said reliable sources.
An agency conducted survey at Nagzira, Koka Wildlife Sanctuaries and some other parts of the tiger reserve recently about installation of towers, using PTZ and thermal cameras and other aspects and submitted its report to Ramanujam, Field Director, NNTR.
When contacted, Nitin Kakodkar, Principal Chief Conservator of Forest (Wildlife), told ‘The Hitavada’ on Friday that he would receive request for proposal from Ramanujam in the next week and then he would submit the report including estimates to the State Government for approval. Once it is approved by the Government, then tenders would be floated immediately for the works. He wanted that the work of e-surveillnace system should begin early and finish in summer so that the project would function from monsoon.
Kakodkar said that the e-surveillance system would help in 24 hours monitoring in jungle.
The system will detect and recognise the moving objects and send alerts to control room/officers, who can swing into action immediately in case of forest fires, tiger moving at boundary or near human settlements, poaching, illicit felling, suspects moving in jungle with evil intention, who is coming inside jungle and going outside, etc.
This will also help the department reduce man-animal conflict, he pointed out.
The e-surveillance system is working for the first time in Rajasthan and on the same lines it is being implemented here. It may be mentioned here that Forest Department had started surveillance system in Ballarshah Forest Range in territorial area in Chandrapur district in 2015. This was the first limited project in the country.
