Learning from the death of seven elephants hit by the Rajdhani Express in Assam's Hojai's Lamding Division, the Jaldapara Forest Department has decided to install closed-circuit cameras on railway tracks for the first time in Bengal on an experimental basis.
For now, wireless CCTV cameras will be installed in two elephant corridors on the railway tracks passing through the Madarihat and Nilpara ranges of the Northeast Frontier Railway's Dooars route. The cameras will be directly connected to the main control room of Jaldapara National Park. Surveillance will continue 24 hours. As soon as elephants come onto the railway line in those two areas, a message will be sent to the control room of the Alipurduar DRM office. This will make it possible to control the speed of trains coming on that track when wild animals are crossing the railway line.
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On the other hand, a decision has been taken to install fibre optic cables on the three-kilometre railway track through the Lataguri forest in Dooars, keeping in mind the presence of elephants. This will send a message to the railway control room when elephants come onto the track. Northeast Frontier Railway's Chief Public Relations Officer Kapinjalkishore Sharma said that trains run at specified speeds on that route in the Lataguri forest due to the elephant corridor. Now work is underway to install sensors there.
The death of seven elephants in Assam's Hojai on Saturday and the death of two wild elephants hit by a goods train near Kholaigram station of Northeast Frontier Railway on November 30 have sounded an alarm among the forest department. As a result, the department wants to introduce live camera technology directly instead of relying only on the railway's installed "Intrusion Detection System" or IDS technology.
Besides, the two accidents that occurred near Assam's Hojai or Kholaigram are never recognised corridors for elephants. As a result, the forest department is concerned about elephants' increasing tendency to come to unfamiliar and unknown places in search of food instead of their traditional movement patterns. Especially to prevent elephants' tendency to come to unfamiliar localities from November to January due to the lure of ripe paddy, the Jaldapara Forest Department decided to install CCTV cameras.
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If this succeeds, forest officials are considering gradually covering all forest-inhabited railway tracks in the entire state with CCTV cameras. Those CCTV camera units will be operated by solar power. Jaldapara Forest Department DFO Parvin Kaswan has stated that for now, cameras will be installed beside railway tracks at two locations in Madarihat and Nilpara ranges to conduct 24-hour surveillance on elephant movements.
