Bengaluru: Taking a step towards transparency in conservation of wildlife, the Karnataka Forest Department has started uploading the post mortem reports of elephants, which died since February 2021.
A directive in this regard was issued by the Principal Chief Conservator of Forest (Wildlife) Vijaykumar Gogi in January to the Information Communication Technology (ITC) wing of the Forest Department. It further stated that details of wildlife deaths should be made public within 24 hours of the confirmation by the authorities.
The directive was issued after wildlife conservationist Giridhar Kulkarni made several appeals to the concerned authorities in this regard.
Referring to the recommendations of the elephant task force constituted by the High Court of Karnataka, the directive issued in January said,“In cases of elephant mortality, we recommend that, as is being done now by the National Tiger Conservation Authority (NTCA), all post mortem examination be held with external observers, and the KFD create a separate section on its website that would record and display post-mortem reports.”
The department had issued a similar order in September 2013 to the field officers, which is yet to be implemented. The Forest Department had then stated since wild animals like tiger, leopard, elephants and other animals were largely targeted by organized poachers, who were also linked to international illegal markets, it was directed that the post mortem reports of wildlife species targeted for wildlife trade shall be put up on the website within 24 hours of conducting post mortem. Along with the post mortem report, a close-up and long-shot images of the targeted wildlife species shall also be put on the aranya.gov.in website.
Kulkarni said that the move will bring transparency. “I hope that post mortem reports of other wild animals will be made available on the website soon,” he said.
Prior to this the researchers, wildlife conservationists and citizens had to file an RTI to solicit details about the death of elephants.
