To ensure the protection of wildlife during man-animal conflicts, special protection vehicles were launched by the Odisha government on Thursday. They will be deployed in 18 forest divisions of Odisha.
As soon as a man-animal conflict is reported from any part of a forest, special response teams will lose no time and arrive at the spot within half an hour or an hour in these special vehicles.
As per reports, such special vehicles that will be used for the rescue of wildlife have been designed for Odisha.
Secretary of the Forest, Environment and Climate Change Department Satyabrata Sahu, Principal Chief Conservator of Forests (PCCF) Debidutta Biswal, and PCCF (Wildlife) Susanta Nanda launched a fleet of vehicles by flagging them off at Bharatpur jungle safari in Bhubaneswar.
All these vehicles will be pressed into service in 18 forest divisions and they will come in handy for rapid response to alerts about any incident of man-animal conflict.
Such rescue vehicles are equipped with hydraulic lift systems, four-tonne winch, generator sets, and emergency lights.
Meanwhile, members of rapid response teams have been imparted training to use these vehicles.
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Satyabrata Sahu told the media, "Our main objective is to ensure the safety of all, be it wildlife or humans. Such a project has been implemented in Tamil Nadu. Their experts along with ours will jointly carry out the exercise. This is to ensure that forests, wildlife, and humans coexist and thrive.”
Pointing out man-animal conflicts in some forest pockets, PCCF (Wildlife) Susanta Nanda said, “The special vehicles have been designed for the safety of rapid response teams and to rescue the wildlife in conflict zones. In 18 forest divisions, rapid response teams have been trained to use the vehicles. The rapid response teams will reach the spot in half an hour to one hour time.”