Drone monitoring for tranquilising tiger in Uttarakhand

A Divisional Forest Officer (DFO) has used drones to monitor and locate a tiger that was to be tranquilised after it killed two humans in Tarai area of Uttarakhand.

"Tiger is an important species. So, we need to monitor it constantly. Drone was used for remote monitoring earlier. But this time, we wanted to ascertain if we have hit the target right and effectively," Sandeep Kumar, DFO, Tarai (East) Forest division, Uttarakhand told IANS.

"It is also useful for the safety of our men out there in the field. There is a possibility that the tiger was hit but not fully tranquilised. In that case, our men approaching it afterwords are likely to be injured if the tiger attacks them," he said.

The tiger had already killed two people in the Khatami area in last 10-15 days and hence it was important to catch it and release it back into the wild to avoid further man-animal conflict.

The Tarai region has been monitored by drones for a number of months now but using it for tranquillising the tiger for man-animal conflict was done for the first time.

It has been since 2017-18 that conservation drones have been used by select tiger reserves of the country.