Beep, beep, there goes a panther

The radio collar project costs an estimated Rs 6 lakh

A correspondent,
Borivili

The forest officials of Sanjay Gandhi National Park have readied a proposal to effectively monitor the movement and living pattern of the panthers in the park, which will not only help them protect the wild cats, but even prevent the attacks on the humans. The plan is to plant a radio collar on each of the 45-odd panthers in the national park and track their movements on a regular basis. The only hitch is that the radio collar project costs an estimated Rs 6 lakh and the forest department does not have the funds to implement the project.

Revealing details about the project, Deputy Conservator of Forests, A R Bharati, said, “The radio collar project will enable us to study the movement of each panther within the park area and probably even pre-empt an attack on the humans.”

According to Bharati, the radio collar project will help the park authorities study the territorial demarcation of the panthers and the factors which drive them out of the forest and seek prey in the human settlements. In the absence of the scientific and precise method of tracking the panthers by radio collar system, the park officials are currently resorting to dated methods like patrolling the forests and laying traps for the panthers. Said Bharati, “sometimes the attacks on humans continue even after trapping a panther and only then we realize that we have trapped a wrong one. With a radio collar, we will know exactly which part of the forest and we can easily track it.”

The entire cost of importing and strapping the radio collars around the necks of each of the panthers will be around Rs 6 lakhs. “Once the collars are imported, a team of forest officials and panthers and bring it down with the anaesthetic gun, before the details of the panther will be noted down and the collar will be strapped round its neck,” said Bharati. Once the panther is collared, its movement can be precisely monitored from the radio control room. “the project will go along way in saving the lives of the humans as well as the panthers, but for the lack of funds to implement it,” said Bharati.