25 wildlife stewards to collect data on black-necked cranes in Ladakh

The eleventh meeting of the State Board for Wildlife was held under the chairmanship of the Ladakh Lieutenant Governor Brig BD Mishra (retd) on Thursday.

Chief Secretary Pawan Kotwal informed the board members about the request made by the L-G to renowned wildlife expert Dr MK Ranjitsinh to help the UT Administration in drafting detailed profiling of wildlife in Ladakh, a comprehensive wildlife policy and the guidelines on role and responsibilities of armed forces in the protection and conservation of wildlife, out of which Dr Ranjitsinh has already worked on detailed profiling of wildlife and work is underway on the other two aspects.

The Chief Secretary also apprised the members of the assessment report on status of black-necked crane in the High Altitude Cold Desert (Changthang) Wildlife Sanctuary 2024-25, informing them that 25 wildlife stewards have been engaged by the Department of Wildlife Protection for seven months and trained and assigned duties to protect and tasked with recording data on number of black-necked cranes, nest sites, chicks, eggs in 25 different habitats of black-necked crane.

He also informed that currently there are 69 adult and 20 chicks of black-necked crane in Ladakh. He further informed the members about the training held for user agencies such as Army and Border Roads Organisation (BRO) officials for handling and correctly uploading wildlife diversion proposals on Parivesh 2.0 portal with the help of NIC Delhi, GoI.

23 infrastructure development proposals received from the Army and the Intelligence Bureau, MHA, along with wildlife clearance proposal for defence roads and wildlife clearance for transmission line in Karakoram and Changthang Wildlife sanctuaries, were put up for discussion during the meeting.

After a detailed discussion, all the projects were approved by the board members, headed by the Lieutenant Governor .