The forest department officials started enumeration of tiger, other carnivores and their prey population in the 450 sq km area of the Anamalai Tiger Reserve that falls under the Udumalpet and Amaravathi forest ranges in Tirupur district. This will conclude on January 11.
District Forest Officer A. Periasamy told The Hindu that 38 groups of people divided into teams were deployed for the job. Each team is made up of a forest guard, an anti-poaching watcher, and one volunteer from among the NGOs/ students.
“We have divided the entire exercise into 19 beats with each of the beats having two transect lines. Every transect line will be of two kilometres length”, Mr. Periasamy said. There will be ‘indirect sighting’ as well as ‘direct sighting’. Indirect sighting would include pug marks, dung, and peeling of tree barks and so on. For the ‘indirect sighting’, each of the teams will cover a minimum of five kilometres criss-crossing the forest every day.
“They have to take photographs of the animals sighted and enter the data in the sheets provided to them”, said a forest official.
In the ‘direct sighting’ exercise to be carried out along the transect lines, team members will travel along straight line and do photographing as well as collection of data of the animals.
