The department of environment and forests will no more rely on manual mapping of the forest areas covered during the patrolling. It will now take the help of Global Positioning System (GPS), which gathers information through the satellite.
To familiarize the forest officials a two-day workshop was held in Patna on Wednesday and Thursday. It was conducted by the technocrats from the US-based Jarmin Company. The Chief Conservator for Development, B A Khan, was the chief guest.
According to the Regional Conservator of Forest Department, S S Chaudhary, the GPS would be of great help during plantation or fire break-outs in the forest. He said that to keep tracks of the area covered under the plantation programme one just need to move around the boundary of the forest. The GPS will provide all the information about the virtual status of the programme. Similar type of help will be provided in case of fire break out in the forest.
GPS would be cost effective as the department would now not need the help of Ameen to map the area. The state government has purchased 30 GPS for this purpose.
Source: www.bihartimes.com 10-Jun-08
