Tuesday, December 29, 2009

Gir patrol staff to be equipped with GPS units

Shubhlakshmi Shukla

Posted: Monday , Dec 21, 2009 at 0112 hrs
Ahmedabad:

Five hundred field staff manning the Sasan Gir Forest will now have to be on their toes as senior officers of the Forest Department will be monitoring their on-field movements.

This comes after the state Ministry of Forest and Environment finalised the Rs 20 crore project of equipping the field staff with the Global Positioning System (GPS) Hand Held Units (HHU).

With this, the Forest Department will now be equipped to monitor the Asiatic lions on a daily basis by the end of 2010. This will fill up several gaps in the management, they say.

The project is the outcome of recommendations by the task force formed by MOEF on May 25, 2007 following a series of reports of poaching of Asiatic lions.

This system with a Geographical Information System (GIS) control room at the Junagadh forest office will provide a daily account of the surveillance activity and the dispersal of the big cats in the two divisions of Sasan Gir.

Source: http://www.indianexpress.com/news/gir-patrol-staff-to-be-equipped-with-gps-units/556886/0

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