Tuesday, June 26, 2018

Forest dept app to keep track of rescues


In a first major move to not only streamline wildlife rescue, but also bring wildlife rescuers on a common platform, the Thane territorial forest department has launched a smartphone application — Praani Mitra on Monday. The application will help the forest department keep a hawk’s eye on all the rescue activity being carried out in its jurisdiction.
As per senior forest officials, systematic gathering of data didn’t happen that left forest department with little information of what animals were rescued and released from Mumbai, Thane and Kalyan area.
“After an initial screening of wildlife organisations as well as individuals working on wildlife rescue the forest department will give them access to use the applications. Every rescuer will have to first alert the forest department about a rescue call and then after the rescue give details about the species rescued, photographs of it as well as details of the person who alerted them using the app and also have to submit details of the release,” said a forest official stating that this was the brainchild of Dr Jitendra Ramgaonkar, Deputy Conservator of Forest (DCF) Thane Territorial.
Pawan Sharma, Honorary Wildlife Warden for Thane welcoming the move said that this app would play a very important role in managing the rescue activity. “The app will facilitate in generating crucial data andwill also help in understanding the dynamics of rescue. Over the years we can even have details like which are the species that are the most rescued and which are the areas from where the maximum rescue calls are generated,” said Sharma.

Source: DNA-22nd May,2018
http://epaper2.dnaindia.com/index.php?pagedate=2018-5-22&edcode=820009&subcode=820009&mod=1&pgnum=2