On Friday, 13-06-2014, at Gene pool, Nadugani, Gudalur, a training session was help for forest department staff to talk about early warnign systems that could be used to reduce human-elephant conflict.
About the meeting and agenda
The meeting was conducted to introduce the ‘Crowd Sourced Elephant Monitoring and Early Warning System’ as a part of the Human Elephant Coexistence project by The Shola Trust. Range officers, foresters and guards from all five ranges (Bitherkad, Gudalur, O’Valley, Pandalur and Cherambadi) attended the meeting, head of all the Panchayats were also invited. Mr. Bomman and some other adivasi leaders also came for the meeting. The main presentations were made by Mr. Tarsh from The Shola Trust (TST), Mr. Timothy Vedanayagam from Advantech and Mr. Hrishkesh from Swatantra Malayalam Computing.
The meeting was started about 3:00 pm, Mr. Rangaswamy range officer, Pandalur range initiated the session by giving an introducing note about the meeting.
Mr. Tarsh then spoke about the present status of elephant problem that exist in this region and few measures that can be taken to prevent such problems. He also explained briefly about the CEMEWS system that can be introduced.
To set up the software for this system two software experts from Kerala worked with TST, namely Mr. Manoj and Mr. Hrishikesh. Mr. Hrishikesh gave a presentation on the technical aspects of the software and the CEMEWS system.
Mr.Timothy Vedanayagam then talked about the hardware they have installed for detection and early warning of elephant movement.
How do these systems work?
The detection hardware by Mr. Vedanayagam is installed at some 11 places in Gudalur Division, which will give a siren warning and also send an SMS when elephants come. There are two types of detectors. One is for flat areas, where two infra red beams of light are passed at a height of 5ft and 7ft, with a receptor kept at a distance of about 100 m to up to 250 m. If both beams are block when the elephant passes, then it will trigger the system. The other type is for very uneven areas, and called a proximity sensor. It is a single unit placed at a high point, and will trigger if anything moves within about 12-15m from it. The sensitivity can be adjusted so it only triggers when big animals like elephant or gaur moves.
The CEMEWS system is just being started by TST. The forest watchers for each beat are supposed to have a knowledge about elephants movements – whether they are near a village, road or plantations. They should know the grid names given to different parts of their beat, as each beat is split in about 5-8 1×1 sq km grids. When they see elephants they should send a SMS to a specific number in a particular format. This format can be saved on their phone and kept. The server receives the message and automatically these messages onto the our website and also saves the message in a database. The software on the website will then look at the grid number, and then send out warning SMS to any people who have registered their mobile number from the neighbouring grids.
Both systems can work well together to send out warnings to people when elephants approach.
Response to the systems
Live demo was done for both the systems. All the numbers of all the staff present were collected, and some people were asked to send SMS in the given format. Based on this SMS was automatically sent to staff in the respective beats. Mr. Timothy also installed the detectors outside the building, to show the staff how they worked.
The forest officials asked few doubts and all were cleared by Mr. Timothy and Mr. Tarsh. The main problem they said was that ‘what can the staff do with getting SMS messages?’. People in the area are all ready to fight with forest department, and everyday they are getting phone calls to chase the elephants back into forests. But there is no forest left and there is nowhere to chase elephants. They also said there are many other problems in the forest department, that cannot easily be fixed. Like many ranges have not equipment or jeeps to even go to the spot when elephants come. Some have jeeps, but then have no drivers or diesel allowance. Unless all these other problems in the department are sorted out the elephant problems will continue.
Mr. Tarsh explained that this was only an early warning system, to inform the public about the elephant movement in certain areas, so they can be careful when coming back in the night or going to toilet in the morning, since most accidents with elephants happen at this time.
The staff thought it maybe useful to have this system, but it will not solve the problem fully.
Others from TST were there and gave support for organising the meeting – Girish Sampath, Ramesh Madan, B. Arunkumar and R.Manikandan.
Written by Subin Kappala, while doing an internship at The Shola Trust.