JAIPUR: In a first in the country, drones and thermal cameras will be part of an advanced surveillance mechanism that will be put in place to check poaching and other anti-wildlife activities in prominent reserves of Rajasthan including Sariska and Ranthambore, before June 30.Technology-enabled surveillance and anti-poaching system will also be in place at Mukundara hills tiger reserve (Kota and nearby region), Jawai Bandh (Pali) leopard conservation reserve and Jhanana nature park (Jaipur).The planning, IT and communication department in association with state forest department are installing protech system which is the first ever 24X7 surveillance and anti-poaching system established by any state in the country.The project will cover total 1173 critical areas. Under the 50 crore project, 16 cameras will be installed to monitor 420 critical areas in Sariska Tiger Reserve and 12 cameras to cover 283 critical areas in Ranthambhore. Similarly, four cameras in Jawai Bandh leopard conservation reserve and 16 cameras will be installed in Mukandara hills to monitor 20 and 417 critical areas, respectively. “The Wildlife Surveillance and Anti-Poaching System (WS and APS) is aimed at effective monitoring and surveillance of wildlife animals at selected locations and we plan to complete the project of advanced monitoring by December this year,” said Akhil Arora, principal secretary of planning, IT and communication department.The technology enabled surveillance system will also help in the improvement of forest department’s monitoring and surveillance mechanism for conserving tiger and other wildlife species. It would ensure the effective monitoring, identification of poaching, check on infiltration, illegal mining and help to retrieve fact-based information for effective decision making.Under the project, the official said, normal image/video capturing cameras and thermal sensing cameras will be used with wireless network. Cameras will be connected to local control room which will be set up at each location for the data collection and analysis. Local control rooms will be connected to divisional/ central control room.“In forest areas, activities during night remain high as compared to day and night vision through thermal cameras will help in monitoring activities more effectively. The cameras will provide a live feed of tiger, panther, leopard and others’ activities in the covered area,” said an IT department official.It was informed that cutting-edge thermal sensing, thermographic cameras with remote zoom capabilities are being deployed in the critical areas of forest. These cameras will keep an eye on wildlife species’ movement in highly sensitive zones of forest and high poaching prone areas. Along with this video motion detection, other required video analytics tools are also being deployed. For monitoring, a total of 100 cameras and five drones are being used.The project is need of the hour as in recent time, six persons were killed in separate cases of panther attack in Alwar’s Sariska and it took several days for the department to identify and catch the cat considered dangerous for human life. In Ranthambhore, 10 big cats that included seven female and three male tigers have remained untraceable in the last five years and such incidents will be easy to deal with the technology-based solutions.

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