Hyderabad: The Telangana state forest department will not be providing water to the wild animals in various forests and protected areas in the state, including the two tiger reserves of Kawal and Amrabad.
Wildlife activists from the city, who visit the various protected zones in the state, maintain the forest department needs to do a lot more as temperatures have already crossed 41-42ºC and all water resources have dried up.
A wildlife activist said, “The number of man-made pits in forest areas is very less and most of them are not filled by water tankers regularly. The lack of water often forces animals to move out of the forests into nearby human habitations — leading to man-animal conflict. In some places, villagers forests have been erecting electric fences.”
Another important measure Telangana state forest officials should take is protection of waterholes outside forest areas. In Maharashtra, waterholes are protected by guards who set up machans, which is seldom done in TS.
And yet another example of official apathy is the plan of to collaborate with the World Wildlife Fund for Nature and corporate companies in 2011 to set up solar water pumps. But only about four such pumps have been installed in the Kawal Tiger Reserve and around 11 in Amrabad.
Each solar water pump set costs around Rs 7.5 lakh. This year not even a single water pump has been installed. The solar pump gets activated by morning and fills a 5,000-litre tank. Once filled, water overflows and becomes a source of drinking water.
