Sasan Gir National Park Wildlife Sanctuary Junagadh News Gujarat India

Lion census is set to begin shortly at the Gir National Park and Wildlife Sanctuary, and the State Forest Department may also take up GIS mapping this time.

But in an irony of sorts, a recent training conducted by the Wildlife Trust of India (WTI) has shown that only 16 per cent of the total staff manning the sanctuary actually knows the exact application of The Wildlife (Protection) Act, 1972. About 490 Gir staff had attended the first-ever WTI training in Gujarat.

Rakesh Singh, WTI Coordinator, told The Sunday Express: “The training was conducted from December 9 to 25 and had two segments. In some cases, it was disappointing to know that the forest officials were not even aware of the application of The Wildlife (Protection) Act, 1972.

Under this Act, every forest officer is empowered to arrest a person, detain vehicles and even seize property if he comes across any wildlife crime. However, not many forest guards and range forest officers were aware about this.”

He added: “There were multiple choice questions in the post training session. Only 50 per cent of the total participants were able to identify the pug/hoof marks of antelopes, lions, sloth bear, chital, hyena, sambhar and black bucks.”

WTI officials said most of the forest officers had already completed 30 years of service as beat guards and range officers.

“The Forest Department has been giving training to the frontline staff, but most of them failed to answer basic queries such as how crime investigation should be done,” Singh said. He also did not rule out that a lack of understanding of wildlife could lead under-reporting of cases.

According to the WTI, nearly 25 per cent of the total staff undergoing training failed to identify wildlife crime; out of 490 staffers, 324 did not know what a protected area is, and only 16 per cent of the total staff knew what their powers are.

“Forest authorities told us that our training received a negative feedback, but the forest officials said otherwise,” said WTI officials.

A Round Forest officer from Girnar Forest Range said: “I have been in this service for 30 years. The WTI training has been more effective, so much so that after the training we were able to identify 13 wildlife crimes.”

Conservator of Forest (Wildlife) M M Sharma refused to comment on the matter.

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Asiatic Lions Sasan Gir National Park Wildlife Jungle News India

Sasan Gir Wildlife Forest patrol staff to be equipped with GPS units.

Project will be in three phases starting 2010; will help Gir forest department maintain cartographic data on lion population.

Five hundred field staff manning the Sasan Gir Jungle will now have to be on their toes as senior officers of the Forest Department will be monitoring their on-field movements.

This comes after the state Ministry of Forest and Environment finalized the Rs 20 crore project of equipping the field staff with the Global Positioning System (GPS) Hand Held Units (HHU).

With this, the Forest Department will now be equipped to monitor the Asiatic lions on a daily basis by the end of 2010. This will fill up several gaps in the management, they say.

The project is the outcome of recommendations by the task force formed by MOEF on May 25, 2007 following a series of reports of poaching of Asiatic lions.

This system with a Geographical Information System (GIS) control room at the Junagadh forest office will provide a daily account of the surveillance activity and the dispersal of the big cats in the two divisions of Sasan Gir National Park.

Any senior officer at the headquarters will be able to keep daily tabs on the Asiatic lions and the surveillance staff with the help of maps — updated daily through the GIS system. Forest officers will know about the the location of the surveillance staff in the forest areas, as also which portion of the lion habitat has been patrolled or skipped in a month or in a week.

The system will also help keep tabs on areas where man and animal conflict has increased or decreased.

Senior officers at Gir said the entire lion habitat could be visualised through this system.

Pradeep Khanna, Principal Chief Conservator of Forest, Administration, said: “The tender for HHUs will be issued shortly. At present, 500 field staff will be equipped with these. Each of the HHUs will have specifications on the location of a kill and the reason behind the lion deaths (trauma or accidents). The project will be in three phases, beginning 2010. The state Forest Department intends to extend it to nearly 1,000 field staff.”

He said: “The Bangalore-based soft ware firm CMC institute will work on the project,” adding that the government has given the go ahead.

A senior forest officer said: “Nearly 20 per cent of the total population of Asiatic lions will be radio-collared so that their daily dispersal pattern can be properly assessed. At present, the monitoring of animal movement is limited to few research studies and projects.”

He said the day-to-day sightings are recorded and reported in forms, reports and registers, but the compilation and collation of such voluminous data for the entire lion population or even of the Gir Protected Area Network is manually not feasible on a daily or weekly basis.

“A longer time period will render the data obsolete. It is impossible to maintain a cartographic record of such data over a few years to generate long-term time-series and use it for trend-forecasting. But with the GIS in place, the forest officers will have ready data of the dispersal pattern of Asiatic lions,” he added.

Asiatic Lions Sasan Gir Town Talala Taluka Junagadh District News Gujarat India

Sasan Gir Town (Talala Taluka, Junagadh District) observes bandh in protest against Asiatic Lion's death.

Sasan town in Junagadh district, famous for Gir Wildlife Sanctuary, on Wednesday observed a half day bandh to protest against forest department’s failure of saving a lion which died after falling down from a bridge.

Entire village remained closed for half-day even auto rickshaw and ferry service operators also extended their support by joining in the bandh which was called by local residents in protest against the forest department, sources said.

They also submitted a memorandum to the forest department and demanded that strict action be taken against the responsible forest officials whose alleged carelessness caused a lion's death, they said.

An eight-year-lion died yesterday after falling off a 15 meter bridge constructed on a Hiran river.

The villagers in the memorandum also sought that lion show being organized by the forest department for tourist should be cancelled to save life of lions.

However, deputy conservator of forest, Amit Kumar could not be contacted to highlight the cause of the lion's death but sources from the forest department did not rule out possibility that the lion might have been hit by a moving vehicle.