Bhubaneswar, April 23: Forest officials are busy counting pugmarks and pellets, among other signs, to assess the population of predators and prey at Similipal wildlife sanctuary in Mayurbhanj district.

The six-day exercise, called “sign survey”, began on Monday. It is being undertaken both in the core as well as the buffer zones of the sanctuary along with the Tiger Reserve. Similipal is famous for a variety of animals, the most famous of them being tigers and elephants.

Similipal field director Anup Nayak said the exercise would help find out the location of predators and determine the density of the prey. This, he said, was a monitoring process that facilitated the installation of trap cameras for the tiger census. “This kind of monitoring is done twice a year in keeping with the National Tiger Conservation Authority protocol,” Nayak said.

Deputy director of Similipal Tiger Reserve Bikash Dash said the population of the two kinds of species was determined by direct sighting as well as analysing pugmarks, scar marks and pellets. “We also mark areas disturbed by humans and cattle grazing patches,” Dash said.

Similipal is currently in the news for Akhand Shikar or the annual mass hunting ritual of the local tribes that began mid-April. Armed with guns, bows and arrows, the indigenous tribes enter the reserve forests and kill game which they then cook in open-air kitchens.