Bhubaneswar, Feb. 18: The forest department is all set to start tiger census from March 8 this year.

An official said that the process would start from February 28 with the training of field personnel. The actual census would commence from the second week of March.

Principal chief conservator of forest S.S. Srivastava said that the process would complete in three phases.

In the first phase, field data would be collected from across the state. This phase would take at least eight days.

Field data pertaining to carnivores such as tigers, leopards and other predatory animals, herbivores, different signs relating to these animals, human disturbance and status of habitat are collected by the forest personnel who will be divided into several teams.

“We will provide the formats for data collection to the field personnel in vernacular language for their better understanding. During this period, 5,37,653sqkm of forest would be covered. In the last estimation, it was found that around 92,111sqkm of forest had tiger occupancy,” said Srivastava.

The first phase estimations are based on pugmark observation, excreta collection, urination, scratch marks on the trees and land. Compilation of data would take time and it would be used for second phase. These data would be provided to the Wildlife Institute of India, who will start the second phase of the work.

In the third phase, the tiger density would be computed using camera traps in a particular statistical framework by research biologists deployed by the wildlife institute.