By Sidhima Choudhary
On Monday, World Wildlife Day, the government of Modi reviewed a number of government initiatives aimed at promoting wildlife conservation, including the extension of the Cheetah project in Madhya Pradesh and Gujarat.
The 7th meeting of the National Board of Wildlife, Gir, highlighted several achievements such as the establishment of new protected areas and the success of species-specific flagship programs, including Project Tiger, Project Elephant, and Project Snow Leopard, among others.
The Board of Wildlife also discussed different efforts for dolphin and Asiatic lion conservation and the development of the International Big Cats Alliance.
The meeting included 9 significant changes in Wildlife Conservation. It incorporates the foundation stone of the National Referral Centre for Wildlife at Junagadh, the Cheetah’s entry into Gandhi Sagar Sanctuary, Madhya Pradesh, the estimation of the 16th Asiatic Lion Population in 2025 etc.
The meeting estimated Uttar Pradesh to have the highest number of dolphins followed by Bihar, West Bengal and Assam. The estimate included the survey of 28 rivers across eight States in 3150 days with a distance covered up to 8500 km.
For the smoother management of human-wildlife conflict, the Modi government established a Centre of Excellence at the Wildlife Institute of India Campus in SACON (Salim Ali Centre for Ornithology and Natural History), Coimbatore.
The meeting also addressed the Rapid Response Teams where the centre will support the states and UTs in a well-equipped Rapid Response Team with advanced technology that will track, forewarn and provide surveillance & Intrusion Detection Systems in major conflict drive hotspot zones.
PM Modi advised the usage of remote sensing & geospatial mapping with proper implementation of Artificial Intelligence & Machine learning to curb the issues like forest fires and human-animal conflicts. Subsequently, he asked for a collaboration between the Forest Survey of India, Dehradun & BISAG-N (Bhaskaracharya National Institute for Space Applications and Geo-informatics) through the use of space technology to address the issues of human wildlife conflict and curb the issue as soon as possible.