Madhya Pradesh increases wild life rescue teams to bring down man-animal conflict

By Bagish K Jha, TNN | Dec 4, 2012, 02.15 PM IST INDORE: In a move to bring down the man-animal conflict and early and safe rescue of wildlife, forest department has created four new rescue teams for Indore, Dhar, Jhabua and Alirajpur. Each team will be consist of 8 to 10 forest personnel including forest ranger and forest guards, they will be equipped with basic rescue equipment. Till now there have been only 8 wildlife rescue teams in entire state, out which one was stationed in Indore. Rescue team of Indore had to look after a huge area right from Burhanpur to Gandhi Sagar and it generally takes several hours and on some occasion even more than a day to reach at the spot. Now there will be a rescue team at every division level. Chief Conservator of Forest (CCF) P C Dubey said, "Each team will have 8 to 10 personnel and they will scattered all across the division. They will gather a place after getting any information about wild animal and carry out rescue operation. In case of any animal like tiger they inform the central team and do ground work for them." Dubey said rescue team at division level will reduce the response time significantly and it will avert any possibility of man-animal conflict. Elaborating further he said till now people at district and division level were not trained so they were of no help even for the central rescue team in case of rescue. Need of the rescue teams can be understood from the fact that last year nearly 200 rescue operations were carried out in Indore range. Most of time animal were rescued includes beer, dear, hyena, blue cow, monkey, black bugs, birds. "Last year a leopard was rescued from Dhar and every year at least one case of leopard rescue is reported from each district in region," said Dubey adding that region has around 16 leopards and some time they venture near village areas. Assistant Conservator of Forest ( Tiger Strike Force) Man Singh said quick response in case of rescue is very essential to avoid man animal conflict. These teams will now be a position to reach at spot within two hours. "Team has been created from existing force. We have given them training and basic equipments," said Singh adding that proposal for equipping these teams with more gadgets have been sent. "Till now we are facing bid problem if we get two calls in one day, as we had only one team for entire region. In addition to this it takes long to reach team at spot. This makes thing complex as huge crowd gathered a spot endangering the life of wild animal," said Singh. http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/home/environment/flora-fauna/Madhya-Pradesh-increases-wild-life-rescue-teams-to-bring-down-man-animal-conflict/articleshow/17476354.cms