Tiger Census: Odisha Hits On ‘Novel Idea’ To Boost Big Cat Count!

Bhubaneswar: Will covering more forests for the tiger census next year yield a better count of the big cat population in Odisha?

This may be a possible cause for the state to decide to expand the 2022 census to 20 forest divisions, instead of the 15 covered last time in 2018. Besides, the state will procure more camera traps for the census. At present, Odisha has around 800 cameras for the purpose.

In fact, the state’s tiger population has seen no growth since the 2014 census. It had put Odisha’s tiger population at 28. The figure was the same in 2018.

Officials, however, are hoping that the number will increase this time.

Officials informed that the National Tiger Conservation Authority (NTCA) recently held a preparatory meeting with the Odisha Forest, Environment and Climate Change (FE&CC) Department for the 2022 census.

Principal Chief Conservator of Forests (PCCF) of Wildlife Shashi Paul said the training of Odisha forest personnel for the tiger census will start very soon and it will be completed by September this year.

Census Modalities

According to the PCCF, the census will include sign survey, pug mark count and camera trapping.

It will also include use of the mobile application called Monitoring System for Tiger-Intensive Protection and Ecological Status (which was used for the first time in 2018) to make the census error free.

3-Phase Count

After completion of training of the field staff in September, the Phase-I data collection will begin in forest divisions from October.

In the second phase, the Wildlife Institute of India will compile the data with geographic information systems (GIS) to identify potential sites with carnivorous density for installation of cameras.

In the third phase, the camera traps would be installed and the divisions would have to submit the data collected by January 2022 for analysis.