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.
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