New Delhi, Feb. 29: The lonely bull, the raging rogue or the caring matriarch and her family of giants will soon have to hand over their privacy, in a way for their own good, to a little human ingenuity.
The elephants in 10 reserves in the country, including four in the Northeast, will be watched from outer space under a new conservation programme ? Monitoring of Illegal Killing of Elephants ? launched by Project Elephant. The sophisticated global positioning system (GPS) will be used for effective management of reserves and prevention of poaching.
The programme encompasses Chirang Ripu, Garo Hills and Dihing-Patkai ? spread across Assam, Meghalaya and Arunachal Pradesh ? in the region. ?Each of the reserves has been selected after proper consideration. The programme has a special significance in the Northeast because there has been a negative trend in the elephant population there,? S.S. Bist, director of Project Elephant, said.
Project Elephant has revealed that the elephant population has gone down considerably in the region, especially in Meghalaya where it has hit an alarming low of 1,840 in 2002 from 2,872 in 1993.
The programme, to be executed in association with Bangladesh, Nepal, Bhutan and Sri Lanka, would get technical assistance from the Convention for International Trade in Endangered Species for training of forest officials and analysis of data. ?The data will be analysed at the local, national and international levels. This could result in altering the current conservation tactics through close co-operation with our neighbours,? Bist said.
At the initial phases, every patrol party would be provided with a GPS handset to determine the precise time and location of the elephants. The authorities have already spent Rs 40 lakh in purchasing the Garmin-72 gadgets from the US, while another Rs 50 lakh has been earmarked for the next fiscal.
Training modules and reporting formats have been prepared with two sessions held recently at Deomali in Arunachal Pradesh and Dihing-Patkai. All the reserves would be equipped with computers and the necessary infrastructure for the monitoring system.
Explaining the hi-tech system, one of the officials said the GPS, a constellation of 24 satellites owned by the US department of defence, receives electro-magnetic signals from the user and transmits back the information to the ground station at Colorado Springs, USA. The data is then formatted into navigation messages and this information would be sent back to the receiving stations in India. Satellites were first used in African countries like Zimbabwe and Kenya where poaching was rampant.