M F AHMAD
Daltonganj, Nov 10: A batch of 70 forest guards undergoing training at Forester and Forest Guard Training School Hazaribag, have their nearly week-long outdoor training in the Palamu Tiger Reserve.
Kumar Ashish, the deputy director of the North division of PTR said, “This contingent of the forest guards has come to Betla with a very experienced wildlife expert Satyaprakash who has done a lot of work on birds. They would get exposure to Betla National Park, sanctuary and reserve with multi-dimensional activities going on there.”
This correspondent spoke to Satyaprakash who said, “These forest guards will see sanctuary management. The habitat, food, and water of wildlife here will be observed by them. Identifying pug marks, casting pug marks on the plaster of Paris etc, its finesse would be taught to them.”
Camera trap is the most in-thing of the PTR. Satyaprakash said these foresters would have first-hand experience with the installation of the cameras and how they capture or traps the movement or presence of the wildlife.
“PTR has a fleet of flora and fauna which is in itself a storehouse of knowledge which a forest guard must be aware of it,” reminded Satyaprakash.
There are 970 species of flora, 25 species of climbers, and 46 species of shrubs besides over 170 species of birds with migratory birds in winter here in the PTR.
Deputy director Kumar Ashish said, “We are expecting another contingent of 48 forest guards coming to Betla today from Chaibasa for the same outdoor training here in the PTR. We have put our 18-room new tourist lodge, 5-room old tourist lodge called Janta lodge, forest rest house 1, forest guest house at Kechki Barwadeeh etc for their accommodation.”
“We know their team leader Satyaprakash will be giving them exhaustive and sincere training but we want these forest guards to learn how eco-development committees are playing a major participatory role in the management of the wildlife as well as in the promotion of tourism especially at locations where are Water Falls,” he added.
“Lessons in man-elephant conflict will be an added experience to the forest guards as the latest instance of an elephant getting killed by electric shock perpetrated by the paddy grower at Labher in the PTR is a fresh case of the man-elephant conflict here while episodes of it are pan India” reminded Ashish.
The jungles of PTR are eye soothing and as such its grasslands matter most. The forest guards who have come here must notice the grasses here which have both palatable and non-palatable ones.
“We believe these forest guards will get time and opportunity to interact with the villagers living in the locale of the PTR to have the first-hand experience of what the challenges are of living in and around any sanctuary or park etc,” Kumar Ashish said.
