Rajasthan’s Wildlife Management Board has recommended advanced radio collars and round-the-clock monitoring of all tigers in Sariska to counter the poaching cases and incidents of the big cats going missing. From the past few months, several cases of tigers getting killed and poached have surfaced that have raised concerns with respect to the safety of big cats in the state.
The state government asked the Wildlife Management Board to enquire the cases and prepare a report on such incidents in Sariska Tiger Reserve. In response, the board reviewed the situation and also analyzed the shortcomings of the present monitoring system.
Tiger with a Radio Collar
In its report, the board recommended that the collars (currently in use) must be immediately replaced with advanced, GPS-enabled VHF ones. The report stated that the collars being used at present have become obsolete and they can only be tracked through handheld antennas carried by the forest guards. So if those are replaced with advanced units, the Tigers could be easily tracked from any location.
Furthermore, recommendations have been made to ensure 24×7 monitoring of the tigers with separate teams working in shifts. Other recommendations include the creation of highly diverse intelligence network, the formation of Sariska Strike Force to counter poaching. Besides, a wildlife crime cell is to be formed for investigation of wildlife crimes under the Chief Conservator of Forest.
Also, the villagers residing nearby the periphery of the tiger reserve need to be relocated to someplace else. This is because there have been many incidents lately when these animals come out to the villages in search of water and attack people. So in order to save the humans, often the animals are beaten (to death) by the crowd of villagers.
Moving on with the wildlife management board’s review, the standing committee has also asked the Wildlife Management Board to sort out all their technical glitches with the signals and frequencies so that whenever there is a signal issue, there is no delay in communicating the same to the forest department.
