Organisations in the city conducted various awareness programmes in the city on the occasion of International Tiger Day on Saturday. Indira Gandhi Zoological Park in association with Paryavarna Margadarsi Vaisakhi celebrated the day at the zoo with a rally, a talk on tiger conservation and a film at the zoo Bioscope.
Students of A.S. Raja Junior College, Bharathi Vidyanikethan School and Trinity Public School participated in the awareness programme.
Tiger being an umbrella species, its presence indicates the health of terrestrial ecosystem and declining tiger habitats indicates the depletion of life supporting systems for all living beings including humans, zoo curator B. Vijaya Kumar said.
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Experts stressed that focus should be more on the grass land management by the foresters so as to maintain the prey base for predators to prosper besides stringent action on poaching of wild animals and separate wings in forest department for intelligence gathering.
Trendsetters Charitable Trust in association with AP Forest Department conducted an awareness programme on tiger conservation at Kambalakonda Eco Tourism Park.The event was kicked off with a briefing by wildlife conservationist Santosh Edupuganti on the importance of tigers in ecosystem, how tiger census is conducted and importance of wildlife conservation.
Later, participants were shown how camera traps were helpful in monitoring wildlife. Participants were explained about various tiger census techniques like pug mark criteria, camera trap criteria and tiger unique stripe identification methods.
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A trek was organised in the park wherein the participants saw some rare and uncommon birds like orange breasted green pigeon and flowerpecker. Zoo curator B. Vijaya Kumar distributed tiger posters and explained importance of tiger and conservation and challenges in conserving wildlife