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Guwahati, Aug 11 (PTI) The Assam government has handed over ten satellite phones to forest personnel in Kaziranga National Park as a step to boost up anti-poaching measures in the world-famed rhino habitat, officials said on Wednesday.<\/p>\n
The satellite phones were handed over by Chief Secretary Jishnu Baruah to the park authorities on Tuesday.<\/p>\n
The forest personnel will use the satellite phones in six ranges of the UNESCO world heritage site where mobile connectivity is poor.<\/p>\n
Kaziranga is home to 2,413 one-horned rhinos, the world’s largest population of the species, according to the last rhino census conducted in 2018.<\/p>\n
The initiative will be of tremendous help in curbing rhino poaching in the park, the officials said.<\/p>\n
Kaziranga is perhaps the first in the country to get satellite phones for its forest personnel, they said. This facility is generally used by security and law enforcement agencies.<\/p>\n
The Assam State Disaster Management Authority (ASDMA) procured the satellite phones for the park at an estimated cost of Rs.16 lakh.<\/p>\n
BSNL will be the service provider and the park authorities will bear the monthly expenses.<\/p>\n
BSNL authorities have trained the forest personnel on how to operate the satellite phones in remote areas inside the forest where mobile phones do not function.<\/p>\n
Environment and Forest Minister Parimal Suklabaidya thanked the chief minister for his prompt initiative in equipping the forest personnel with satellite phones.<\/p>\n
The satellite phones will be immensely useful for coordination and will help in removing the communication bottlenecks inside the sprawling park , he said.<\/p>\n
The satellite phones will give an edge to the forest personnel over the poachers and also during emergencies like a flood, Suklabaidya added.<\/p>\n
The decision to arm the forest personnel of the park with satellite phones was taken at a meeting chaired by Chief Minister Himanta Biswa Sarma at Kaziranga National Park on May 27.<\/p>\n
Rhino poaching is still a threat in the protected areas of the state as poachers have killed 22 one-horned rhinos in Assam since 1917, the forest minister had informed the assembly recently.<\/p>\n
Nine of the animals were killed in 2017, seven in 2018, three in 2019, two in 2020, and one in 2021 so far in the north-eastern state, the minister had said. PTI<\/p>\n
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Guwahati, Aug 11 (PTI) The Assam government has handed over ten satellite phones to forest personnel in Kaziranga National Park as a step to boost up anti-poaching measures in the world-famed rhino habitat, officials said on Wednesday. The satellite phones were handed over by Chief Secretary Jishnu Baruah to the park authorities on Tuesday. The […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-168935","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","6":"category-north-east"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/arunachaltimes.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/168935","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/arunachaltimes.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/arunachaltimes.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/arunachaltimes.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/arunachaltimes.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=168935"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/arunachaltimes.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/168935\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/arunachaltimes.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=168935"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/arunachaltimes.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=168935"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/arunachaltimes.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=168935"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}