Division Forest Office using drones to monitor forest areas

Chandrapur (Rautahat), July 14: The use of drones has eased the monitoring of the forests in Rautahat. The Division Forest Office of Rautahat, Sahiya sub-division forest office, has begun using drones to control poaching and timber smuggling. 

For the past three months, monitoring has been conducted in the forest areas using drones effectively. 

Binod Jethar, a forest officer, said since drones have been used for monitoring, smuggling of timber, forest products and river resources has been controlled. With the help of drones, monitoring of a 10-kilometer forest area has become easier, and it has significantly contributed to forest conservation, according to Jethar.

He stated that the use of drones has made it easier to track smugglers. He informed that due to drones, the smuggling of river products in Dhansar River has also been controlled. Hundreds of bicycles are found going into the jungle under the guise of fire wood collecting.  And they are found collecting Saal woods, and carried to various brick kilns in Rautahat by the smugglers. 

Hemant Prasad Sah, the chief of the Division Forest Office in Rautahat, informed that the drone is monitoring the forest areas of Sahia, Chocha, Dhansar, and Gaidatar in Rautahat. He mentioned that currently only one drone is used in monitoring the forest and they were planning to add more drones in the days to come.

There are 30,170 hectares of forest area in Rautahat. Among them, 8,231 hectares are government-managed forests, 11,927 hectares are managed by partnership forests programmes, 1,052 hectares are managed under block forest management, 8,257 hectares are community forests managed by 43 groups, 51 hectares are religious forests managed by four groups, and 656 hectares are protected by private forests, he reported. 

He said that during the current fiscal year, more than 12 hectares of encroached forest land in various locations of the district have been cleared for tree planting. Meanwhile, the Division Forest Office, Rautahat, has also reported that it produced 818,078 seedlings of various species during the current fiscal year, according to Forest Officer Sah. (RSS)