HT Digital
ITANAGAR, Mar 5: For the very first time, a tiger was caught on camera trap during a recent survey and monitoring exercise held in Mehao Wildlife Sanctuary. This milestone is a significant breakthrough in the conservation work of the sanctuary.
The survey was coordinated by Mehao Range Forest Officer (RFO) Dr. Kabuk Lego, assisted by NERIST PhD scholar Deepankar Barman, in association with the Wildlife Trust of India. Previous reports of tigers through secondary evidence like pugmarks and local sightings have not been complemented by a photographic record hitherto.
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“The presence of tigers has always been reported in sign surveys or by the public, but no tiger images had ever been captured in camera traps till date, despite several intensive studies carried out in the past,” stated Mehao Wildlife Sanctuary Divisional Forest Officer (DFO) Mito Rumi in an official release on Tuesday.
The declaration also emphasized the importance of the involvement of local conservation communities, the Idu Mishmis and Adis in particular, in the conservation of biodiversity of the area. The Lower Dibang Valley still supports a dense vegetation of plants and animals, such as large cats, birds, and wild ungulates.
The DFO further reiterated that good quality of habitat and large prey base within the Dibang, Kamlang, and Namdapha landscape is a pre-requisite for keeping in place healthy genetic flow amongst major carnivores. But while retrieving camera traps early in February, the survey team also found a tiger foot-trap laid by poachers.
One of the team members, Rama Umpo, was left with leg injuries from the trap. “Foot-traps laid to hunt large animals are a serious threat not only to wildlife but also to tourists, students, villagers, and mithun herders,” warned the DFO.
In the wake of this incident, forest officials have been continuously undertaking combing operations along suspected poacher routes to identify and destroy such dangerous traps. For enhancing anti-poaching efforts, Mehao Wildlife Sanctuary will work together with other law enforcement forces, such as the central organization Wildlife Crime Control Bureau (WCCB), to counter tiger poaching networks operating across state and international borders.
Moreover, cash rewards have been declared for providing credible information about tiger poaching syndicates.
