Guwahati, Jan. 31: For the next three months, troops deployed on the Sino-Indian and the Indo-Myanmar borders will keep one eye on infiltrators and another on red pandas, snow leopards and musk deer.
Since large tracts along the border are accessible only to the army, World Wildlife Fund-India has urged the forces to help it in documenting some rare wildlife species that are commonly sighted in these areas.
The first step towards this venture was orientation workshops conducted by WWF-India for army officers at Tenga and Tawang on January 21-23.
For this “mission”, as the army would like to call it, the troops will be required be carry the humble notebook — to jot down details about the animal when they sight one.
“Two hundred copies of field notebooks were given to them with pictures of 15 animals and four birds which are rare and threatened,” Pijush Kumar Dutta, officer in-charge WWF-India, Dirang, said.
The notebook, specially designed for army officers, also mentions the features by which they can be easily identified even by an untrained eye.
“This (the project) will also help WWF-India know about the habitat and distribution of these animals and develop long-term plans for their conservation,” he added.
The workshop was the outcome of a joint action plan signed on September 5 last year between Sejal Worah, programme director, WWF-India and Maj. Gen. D.S. Sidhu, GOC, 5 Mountain Division, headquartered at Tenga.
The Western Arunachal Landscape (WAL), covering nearly 7,000 square km of Tawang and West Kameng districts, is one of the seven “priority landscapes” identified by WWF in the Eastern Himalayas — covering India, Nepal and Bhutan. “Western Arunachal Pradesh has a rich diversity of rare and endangered fauna and flora, most of which has not been explored and documented so far,” Dutta said.
The army is more than willing to help.
“We are committed to saving the environment and we will contribute towards it. This is the first (effort) of its kind in this area at least and has been done under the initiative of Maj. Gen. D.S. Sidhu,” Col G. Sankar, based at Tenga, said.
The field notebooks will be handed over to WWF-India for analysis and compilation of the information collected after three months.
