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By conservative estimates, over the past decade Jharkhand has lost at least 12 elephants and over 1,000 people due to inadvertent contact, the most recent one being in Bundu on December 3 when a herd trampled a woman to death. Economic losses due to damage of crops and property are immense.
But, the new web-based Elephant Tracking System devised by the forest department, which has currently been hosted on test mode on its website forest.jharkhand.gov.in, may change this by helping foresters, district administration, railways and even the masses access the location of elephants virtually.
Developed by the department’s IT cell, trial runs of the web interface started earlier this week and formal operations should begin by month-end, principal chief conservator of forests (wildlife) L.R. Singh said.
Under the system, forest officials on the ground across 32 territorial and four wildlife divisions will daily track herd movements and feed inputs such as the number of elephants and the area’s GPS, using their login ids and passwords.
At department headquarters, software will convert this data and put it on Google Maps so that anyone logging in can track elephant movements on a real-time basis.
“Currently, the forest department comes to know about elephant presence in any area only after human casualties take place, the elephant is harmed or crops and property is damaged. We hope that in the coming days this will be a potent tool to scientifically understand elephant movements and initiate steps accordingly to minimise losses in the state where man-elephant conflict is a menace,” Singh said.
He hoped that the web-based system would help the forest department in at least two ways, proper mapping of herd movement and scientific diversion of herds. For, as of now, one division shoos away elephants to another division just to get rid of their responsibility.
“This is highly unscientific, as no matter what division, incorrect diversion of a herd only increases the possibility of conflicts, loss of revenue and resource. With a tracking system now, we can guide forest staff on the ground where and how to divert elephants, get to know the behaviour of the elephants, their daily movements and so on,” Singh said.
Bokaro DFO P.R. Naidu agreed the online system would help them respond to emergencies faster. “Currently, we send weekly elephant reports to headquarters. In some cases, where elephant movements change regularly, we send it daily or once in two days. Once online tracking begins, we can respond to crisis much faster and in normal times too get real-time updates of elephant movement of every division,” Naidu said.
Devanand Prasad, an official at the department’s IT cell, held out hope that laypersons would also be able to access elephant locations in their area in due course on http://elephant.
“There is a section called track elephant movements which will soon give information about their possible movements on Google Maps,” Prasad said.
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