Jamshedpur, April 3: In a major lapse, subordinate forest staff, who were engaged in filling up forms during the tiger census in the famous Saranda forest (West Singhbhum), left out a crucial column on the ?latitude and longitude? of the forest area.

The Wildlife Institute of India (WII), Dehradun, has designed various columns for tabulating the population of carnivores, herbivores and status of their habitats across Jharkhand.

State forest and environment ministry completed the marathon ?statewide? tiger census between February 15-23. So far, the territorial forest divisions of the state have been engaged in documenting a ?final report? on the census, which will be verified by the WII expert team.

Global Positioning Systems (GPS), a means for measuring latitude and longitude of a place, was mandatory to use for pinpointing the exact location of animals and their habitats during the census. But untrained forest employees carried out the census without using the GPS. Senior forest officer of the Saranda forest division said many incomplete forms have been submitted by the rangers.

?The subordinate staffers of Gua forest range, one of the ranges of Saranda, have left out a column of GPS. The census remained incomplete without filling the space of GPS,? a senior officer said. He added that the final report on tiger census needed to be compiled by the end of April. ?The team of experts from WII is coming to scrutinise the final census report. Each divisional forest officer has to send the census report to state forest and wildlife office in Ranchi,? the officer pointed out.

A front life staff member, who was engaged in the tiger census, said the Saranda divisional forest officer failed to arrange proper training for the employees before the census. ?We did not know how to gauge the latitude and longitude of the place with the help of GPS. Instead of making errors in measuring the exact location, we preferred to leave the column unanswered,? he said.

He added that the divisional forest officer should not blame front life staff, who braved to walk into the Naxalite hotbed of Saranda forest for tiger census.

DFO S. Singh, was unavailable for comment.