Hyderabad, (Samajweekly) Telangana’s Forest Department has sought help of the National Tiger Conservation Authority (NTCA) and the Wildlife Institute of India (WII) in dealing with tigers in Asifabad district after they mauled to death two persons in last 18 days.
The department has requested the NTCA and the WII to send their representatives to review the measures being taken to deal with the tigers and give their advice and suggestions.
Principal Chief Conservator of Forests R. Sobha spoke to NTCA officials in this regard.
The PCCF has also constituted a seven-member monitoring committed as per the Standard Operating Procedure (SoP) of the NTCA to track and deal with the tiger which mauled to death a 15-year-old tribal girl on November 29 in Bejjur reserve forest in Asifabad.
The NTCA has nominated Imran Siddiqui of HyTICOS, as its nominee to the committee constituted for technical guidance and monitoring.
C. P. Vinod Kumar, Conservator of Forests and a nominee of the Chief Wildlife Warden of Telangana, is the Chairman of the committee.
Siddiqui, Venkat of NGO RECAP, Dr Shwetha, veterinary assistant surgeon, Upasi Sanjeev, sarpanch, Kondapally and the district forest officer are members of the panel and the division forest officer is member secretary.
Special teams of staff and animal trackers have been placed round the clock at Kondapally village as the villagers are under constant fear that the tiger may enter again.
The Conservator of Forests informed that, instructions have been issued to place the teams in village and surrounding hamlets/villages and also to make by tom-tom announcements for alerting the villages.
The Forest Department has also issued dos and don’ts for villagers residing nearby forest areas with movement of tigers and other wildlife.
The villagers have been asked to avoid leaving pathways in agricultural fields and also avoid using routes passing through the forest areas. The department said check gates placed by it along the forest roads should not be objected to.
A minimum of 8 to 10 people shall go to agricultural fields for harvesting or other agricultural operations. In that group, one person should be compulsorily deployed as sentry, whose duty is to make sound by drum beating and whistling.
The Forest Department has asked farmers to stay on machans in agricultural fields while guarding their crops. The shepherds shall go in groups and shall not take the cattle deep inside the forest for grazing and restrict themselves to half-a-kilometer from the village. The shepherds shall go for grazing after 9 a.m. and return by 4 p.m.
The human-animal conflict in the district has claimed two lives in 18 days. In the first incident on November 11, a 20-year-old tribal youth was mauled to death by a tiger in Girelli forest area of Rebanna Range in Asifabad division.
The forest officials suspect that two different animals were involved in the two incidents.
After the first incident, the department had constituted a committee and deployed tiger trackers to deal with the big cat.
