Forest department to establish professional rescue teams

Telangana Forest Department plans to set up three professional wildlife rescue teams at Amrabad, Kawal, and Warangal to manage wild animals entering human areas. Each team will have trained personnel, specialized vehicles, equipment, and medical kits to ensure animal and human safety

Hyderabad: With incidents of wild animals entering into human habitations increasing steadily in the State, the forest department is now planning to establish professional rescue teams to handle the situations effectively and ensure safety of the animals.

Already, other States have established these professional rescue teams. It costs about Rs.60 lakhs to Rs. 65 lakhs to set up one such team and there will be five to six personnel specially trained in operating tranquilizers and other services.

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At present, there are no professional rescue teams in the department. Whenever, any wild animal enters into human habitations or gets injured or dies, a team of veterinarians from Nehru Zoological Park are taken to the spot.

However, this exercise was affecting the veterinarians’ services in the park. More so, when an incident occurs far away from the zoo park, travelling all the way to the spot was not only time consuming but also cumbersome for the veterinarians.

Furthermore, in the current practice of setting up cages to capture the wild animals and tranquilizing them was also a task for the forest personnel. There are few conventional cage traps in the respective forest sections and they are relatively very heavy.

After an animal gets trapped, the cage gets heavier. The forest personnel have to transport it to the zoo park. After treatment, the cage and the animal have to be taken back to respective forest section for releasing the animal back into the forests.

To address all these issues, the forest department is now proposing to set up professional rescue teams. These teams would have one specially fabricated vehicle with a special cage and hydraulic system. This apart, these vehicles would have a 200-litre water tank, medical kits, gloves, tranquilizers, nets and special uniforms for the staff to ensure their safety, a senior official said.

“Initially, we are planning to have three rescue teams. They will be stationed in Amrabad Tiger Reserve, Kawal Tiger Reserve and Warangal. The one at Amrabad will be operational before March 2026,” the official said.