Radio collars, 24x7 monitoring of all Sariska tigers: Wildlife board

: Rajasthan’s top body for wildlife management has recommended advanced radio collars for all tigers at Sariska and their round-the-clock monitoring with separate teams to prevent poaching in the game reserve which had lost all its big cats in 2005.

The standing committee of the State Board for Wildlife (SBWL) has also recommended relocation of some villages from the periphery of the tiger reserve.

The recommendations came after one tiger, officially identified as ST-11 died on March 19, and a tigress, ST-5, went missing on February 21. It is yet to be located. The state government had last month asked the SBWL to enquire and report the reasons for the two incidents and shortcomings in the monitoring system at the Sariska Tiger Reserve (STR), spread over 800 square kilometres in Alwar district.

In its report, the SBWL has recommended immediate replacement of the collars with advanced GPS-enabled VHF collars. The present collars are obsolete and can be tracked only through hand-held antennas carried by forest guards. GPS-enabled collars will help track the tigers from any location.

The recommendations include monitoring of the tigers 24x7 with individual teams working in shifts, creation of highly diverse intelligence network to prevent illegal acts of snaring and poaching, immediate creation of the Sariska Strike Force, pending for the last 10 years, and creation of a wildlife crime cell under chief conservator of forest with sole purpose of preventing, detecting and investigating wildlife crime.

The committee has also asked the Wildlife Institute of India to sort out all technical problems with their signals and frequencies in order to ensure that when a signal is absent, there is no delay in informing the forest department.

JAIPUR