Telangana State Forest Department to launch mobile app to curb forest wealth theft

Hyderabad: Telangana State Forest Department (TSFD) is all set to launch a new mobile application called 'Patrolling App' within a week. According to the TSFD officials, the new application will help monitor, report and collect evidence from the field sent by the beat and section level officials.

Giving details of the mobile application, P Raghuveer, Principal Chief Conservator of Forests (IT and Publicity), said, the Forest Beat Officers (FBO), who go on foot patrolling within their designated forest areas to prevent encroachments and illegal felling of trees and the like, keep sending reports to higher officials.

Currently, they are using a free application called 'Note Cam,' a camera application. Using this, the FBOs are sending photographs while on the move in their designated areas. They take a picture while moving and send the same to the district level officials. The photograph comes with the details of the latitude and longitude, date and time stamp.

This gives the precise idea of whether the FBOs are going on foot patrol in their designated area. Also, the FBOs can record illegal felling of trees or catch anyone red-handed while illegally transporting forest wealth. Since the pictures captured have the details the same could be produced as evidence before the court.

However, replacing the free application, now, the TSFD is taking help from the Wildlife Institute of India (WII), Dehradun to come up with a new and exclusive mobile application. It will be introduced within a week's time.

The WII has been using a comprehensive mobile application with several features related to the forest conservation, wildlife and the like. The application is being used in the monitoring in the tiger reserves. It will capture the movement of tigers and other wild animals, any symptoms of degradation of the forest patches, the status of water resources within the wildlife sanctuaries and a host of other things.

Rghuveer said the WII has to add layers sent to it from the TSFD to the existing mobile application. The Patrolling App is connected to the servers at the WII. The TSFD layers sent to the WII includes various features related to the forest areas of Telangana.

Once, these are added, then, the mobile application will come in handy with perfect features for the beat officers to the top officials at the State headquarters. Because the ground level activity from the forest beats could be flashed directly on the computer screens at the district as well as State headquarters.

In turn, this would help not only monitoring the functioning of the field level staff but also give a quick response to help sought from the field officers, he added. The new mobile application will also have the features to collect the evidence with the area, date and time stamp.