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 Protecting
Tiger - The National Animal of India at
Corbett
National Park
: With
poachers posing a massive threat to tigers
in India, the National Tiger Conservation
Authority (NTCA) has launched a pilot project
in Uttarakhand's Corbett National Park for
round-the-clock surveillance of the park
using high definition cameras.
Electronic
Eye at Jim Corbett National Park
:
The project E-eye (electronic eye) is a
software-based system where 10 high resolution
thermal and infrared cameras mounted on
a tower are spread across the 350 sq km
area of the park that falls in a highly
sensitive zone bordering Uttar Pradesh.
The cameras capture image of objects weighing
more than 20 kg and generate alerts if they
are crossing the boundary. The alerts are
sent to the control room in the park and
the NTCA office in Delhi.
All the cameras have been placed in positions
from where they cover the entire 350
sq km of the area and can be controlled
by NTCA officials sitting in Delhi.
According to the NTCA, due to shortage of
field staff it was getting difficult to
cover the entire 800 sq km of the Corbett
area and installation of cameras has brought
down the incidence of infiltration in the
area drastically.
The cost of the project is around Rs.3.5
crore.
"It is for the first time in the world that
a surveillance system of this type is being
used in any national park. The project was
launched some five-six months back
to check poaching of tigers in the park,"
Deputy Inspector General (DIG) of Forests
and joint director of NTCA, S.P. Yadav said.
The cameras monitor the area 24X7 and send
images even during the night.
"It has helped in checking infiltration,
poaching and illegal mining in the area.
As soon as the control room receives alerts
and images of people or vehicles inside
the area, an alert team is sent to the location,"
he said.
Initially, the cameras have been placed
on the Uttar Pradesh border as that was
the sensitive area where several incidents
of infiltration and poaching were reported
in the past.
The NTCA will monitor the system for a year
before replicating the project in other
sensitive areas of India's 41 tiger reserves
which houses a total of 1,706 tigers.
Yadav says that there have been incidents
where people have been arrested for mining
illegally in the area and it has instilled
fear among the locals and they have stopped
venturing into the protected zone.
The NTCA was helped in this project by a
Pune-based company, Binomial Solutions
Private Limited, set up by a group of
young engineers and management graduates.
"It was my love for wild animals that made
us come up with a system that can help in
monitoring the park even in the night and
sitting several kilometres away. It is a
fool-proof anti-poaching system that gathers
information, does processing, filtering
and then sends alerts," Ravikant Singh,
CEO of the company, told IANS.
The cameras can capture the thermal and
normal image of the body mass irrespective
of forest density and inclement weather
conditions.
The company is also working with the Wildlife
Institute of India ( WII) to develop a parallel
system for counting of tigers.
"Besides, we have got the tender for installing
a similar system in another tiger reserve
and are also doing a case study in Assam's
Kaziranga National park," said the 33-year-old
techie.
Source :- hThe
Times of India
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