4 lakh camera trap pics reflect richness of wildlife

KOZHIKODE: The tiger census in wildlife-rich Wayanad forests have sprung up a surprise for the forest department with the camera trap survey yielding a whopping four lakh wildlife images.
The forest department is now left with the mammoth task of sifting through the huge pile of images-which includes all types of wild animals-to know the number of big cats in Wayanad, which is home to the highest number of tigers in the state.
As per the Status of Tigers in India-2014 report, Wayanad is home to around 76 of the 136 tigers in the state. Camera trap surveys are conducted by placing motion- detecting cameras inside forests which are triggered when an animal crosses the infra-red beam emitted from the camera trap.
Forest officials say that the 'capture' of such a high number of wild animals in the camera traps indicates the immense wildlife biodiversity in the Wayanad forests, including the Wayanad Wildlife Sanctuary (WWS).
"The camera trap survey held in November- December have yielded over four lakh images from the Wayand forest landscape. As the camera traps are motion sensitive they have captured images of all types of animals- ranging from tigers to leopards to deer and elephants and even birds- which had crossed the line of the cameras," a top forest department official said.
Experts analysing the images said they have completed the manual sorting of out all the four lakh images and segregated around 700 tiger photographs, which included multiple images of the same animal.
The tiger images are now being analysed using a pattern matching software which will analyse the unique stripe patterns to identify each individual tiger. The pattern-matching algorithm extracts stripe patterns to short list the matched tigers.
The forest department had deployed around 220 camera traps in Wayanad landscape, covering WWS and north and south Wayanad forest divisions as part of the tiger census held during November and December 2016. The final report about the tiger census will be ready within one month.
P Dhanesh Kumar, Warden of Wayanad Wildlife Sanctuary, said that the apart from knowing the tiger population, the diversity of camera trap images obtained from Wayanad forests would help in gaining insights and information of on a host of other rare and elusive animals.