Wildlife issues: India
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Survey of wildlife
2018–19, “most comprehensive”
After recording robust growth in the numbers of tigers in the 2018 census, India recorded yet another feat by entering the Guiness Book of World Record for conducting what has been referred to as the “largest camera trap wildlife survey”, yet. The fourth edition of the tiger census, in 2018–19, was the “most comprehensive” to date, “in terms of both resource and data amassed”, the Guiness World Record team said.
“Camera traps (outdoor photographic devices fitted with motion sensors that start recording when an animal passes by) were placed at 26,838 locations across 141 different sites and surveyed an effective area of 121,337 square kilometres (46,848 square miles). In total, the camera traps captured 34,858,623 photographs of wildlife (76,651of which were tigers and 51,777 were leopards; the remainder were other native fauna). From these photographs, 2,461 individual tigers (excluding cubs) were identified using stripepattern-recognition software,” the Guiness team that announced India’s feat added. Welcoming India’s entry into the Guiness World Records, Union environment and foreign minister Prakash Javadekar said, “We are happy that the proactive measures taken in the area of conservation and environment under the leadership of PM Modi have been endorsed formally and India has been lauded for conducting the most comprehensive survey yet.”
In addition to camera trap usage, India’s 2018 “Status of Tigers in India” assessment also conducted extensive foot surveys that covered 522,996 km of trails and sampled 317,958 habitat plots for vegetation and prey dung. It is estimated that the total area of forest studied was 381,200 sq km and cumulatively the collection and review of data equated to some 620,795 labour-days.
The assessment was carried out over three phases, with the various datasets then combined to be extrapolated via statistical computation. A positive outcome of the survey was that it concluded that India’s tiger population had increased by roughly onethird: from 2,226 in 2014 to 2,927 in 2018, though the Guiness team says “some have cautioned that this rise may in part reflect more comprehensive surveying as opposed to purely a population surge”.
Wildlife deaths
Roadkills: App(lication) to report
Be it tigers or toads, roads that cut through their habitats can be deathtraps for wild animals. Now, a mobile-based application, ‘Roadkills’, launched on January 21 by the Wildlife Conservation Trust, will help citizens to report such wildlife deaths by uploading geo-tagged photographs to a public forum. This can be used to identify crucial road or rail stretches that urgently require mitigation measures.
The app
‘Roadkills’, an easy-to-use android app, accesses location information from phones and permits users to upload photographs of a dead wild animal on a road or railway line. With the resulting geo-tagged photographs, users can also include what taxon the animal belongs to (bird, mammal, reptile or amphibian), the species’ name (if known) and the area where the roadkill was seen.
The information from all records reported from across India with this citizen science initiative will be compiled as a database, which can soon be viewed on a map on the campaign’s website (www.roadkills.in). The Wildlife Conservation Trust (WCT), a wildlife NGO which developed the app, will also share detailed data free of cost and under a Creative Commons licence to students, wildlife researchers or infrastructure agencies who may need it to study patterns of wildlife deaths on roads and railway lines.
How this can help
The information generated from the application can help identify crucial sections of roads or railway lines where animal deaths are high to pinpoint regions that require urgent mitigation measures. The data can also help determine what species are more at risk on specific road or rail stretches and plan the ideal mitigation measures suited for the location – from underpasses or overpasses for large mammals to canopy bridges for arboreal ones such as monkeys.
“Unplanned development of roads and railway lines is the major cause of wildlife roadkills,” wildlife biologist Milind Pariwakam of WCT said.
“We hope that the information from the campaign will help plan our infrastructure needs better and devise win-win solutions for wildlife to make our infrastructure development smart and green,” he added.
The app has had 500 installations so far and will soon be launched as an IOS application. It will also cater to regional language users in future.
Wildlife trafficking
2013-15
See graphic:
Wildlife traffcking cases-states with over 10 cases, 2013-15, year-wise
