An inter-State meeting of senior forest personnel in Karnataka, Tamil Nadu and Kerala at Bandipur in Karnataka recently decided to make concerted effort to conserve wildlife in the region.
The meeting, convened by the National Tiger Conservation Authority (NTCA) regional zone, Bangaluru, discussed various issues, including the invasion of invasive plants in the forest areas, steps being adopted by the authorities to vulture conservation, movement of radio collared higher mammals such as tiger and elephants and various measures to be adopted to mitigate man-animal conflict in the region, B. Anjan Kumar, Chief Conservator of Forest, (Wildlife, Palakkad), told The Hindu .
The meeting decided to intensify joint efforts to eradicate invasive plants such as Senna Spectabilis which caused major threat to the wildlife habitat in the Nilgiri Biosphere Reserve, Mr. Anjan Kumar said.
Though the Kerala Forest Department had begun various programmes to curb the spread of the plant in the Wayanad wildlife sanctuary, similar initiation was yet to be taken by the adjacent tiger reserves in Karnataka and Tamil Nadu, he said.
The meeting decided to ensure inter-State coordination in conserving the endangered vulture population in the region.
The meeting assessed that Kerala and Tamil Nadu have been regularly monitoring the vulture population in their jurisdiction, but their counterpart in Karnataka needs to strengthen their ongoing conservation efforts.
It also discussed various strategies to be made to conserve the remaining vulture population in the country.
Standard operating procedure of the NTCA, such as joint patrolling, share enforcement-related information and monthly meeting of senior forest officials of borders areas of tiger reserves and protected areas, would be executed effectively for the conservation of big cats.
Joint conservation measures with public participation would be executed to mitigate increasing human-wildlife conflict on the forest fringes of the region. As part of it, information regarding radio collared animals and their movements would be exchanged among the department staff.
Joint actions would be taken to douse forest fire and information on such incidents would be handed over to the officials in the adjacent sanctuaries and tiger reserves.
Information on accused in forest cases would also be exchanged each other to avert wildlife-related crimes, Mr. Anjan Kumar said.
Karnataka chief wildlife warden Sanjay Mohan presided over the function.
