Arunachal: training programme on conservation of threatened vertebrate fauna in Indian Himalayan region
Pasighat By Maksam Tayeng
Zoological Survey of India, Kolkata (ZSI) organizes two days training programme on Conservation of Threatened Vertebrate Fauna in Indian Himalayan Region through Long-Term Monitoring and Capacity Building here at Pashighat, East Siang District of Arunachal Pradesh in association with the Arunachal Pradesh Forest Department on 10th and 11th February, 2020.
The workshop was conducted in Jahwarlal Nehru College with the series of lectures, hands on training on camera tapping and other methods that frequently used to monitor threaten vertebrate.
The workshop is aimed to train the forest staff and other stakeholders and to create awareness among the locals on wildlife conservation, wildlife illegal trade and how to monitor and mitigate the human wildlife conflict issues.
The team member, Dr. Bheem Dutt Joshi has introduced the steps and approaches used in the wildlife conservation in the Himalayan regions that ZSI is adopting and threats and issue with the wildlife conservation.
He focused on top five conservation priority species found in the East Siang District that required immediate action towards the conservation and suggest more research needed to obtain the data on species distribution and status of key species in the area.
He also added how the consumption of meat of wild animal leads to transmission of zoonotic virus to the human.
Further Dr. Kenjum Bagra provided in the ethnology and biodiversity conservation and important highligy how the biodiversity is threaten.
Next in the series, Dr. Ashutosh Singh elaborated Wildlife Crime and use of wildlife forensics in supporting the enforcement agencies and conservation of species using the morphology and DNA based techniques.
Further, Dr. Kendo Kado introduces about the fish diversity and local Conservation issue and suggested the ban fishing during the breeding seasons.
This training programme has also details update on work so far done by Zoological Survey of India since last two year in the East Siang.
Hands on training will be extended to second day where the details will be provided on the different techniques such as Camera traps, Spotting scope, and other equipments used in the wildlife monitoring by research team.
These tools and techniques enable to understand the habitat use, habitat ecology, animal movements, population genetics, evolutionary histories, activity pattern so effective management strategies can drawn for the species that found in Himalaya.
In the programme about 80 Participants has participated from the Forest Department, Police, School Colleges, Students and Local representation.
The participants was from the Forest department, Village head of different villages, college teachers and students have actively participated and had a detailed discussion on the wildlife conservation and mitigation strategies.
