The capacity
building component has three major
thrust areas:
| 1. |
Training Indian biologists and researchers |
| 2. |
Training park management personnel |
| 3. |
Training non-governmental volunteer
conservationists. The
capabilities to be built vary
among these three target
groups. |
|
The researchers
acquire skills in a variety of areas
of animal and habitat-related studies;
park staff are trained primarily
in protection, mapping and monitoring
of key vertebrate species; and the
conservation volunteers are trained
in simple wildlife monitoring techniques
and in conservation advocacy tactics.
These training workshops involve
intensive field sessions in the
application of sampling based methods
for monitoring large mammal populations
in Indian reserves.
The methods include density estimation
of tiger prey species, relative
abundance estimation of large herbivores
and carnivores using pellet count
and scat encounter rates respectively,
and the demonstration of camera
trap techniques to survey and estimate
carnivore populations. |
A graduate
program to produce Indian students
with the skills necessary to be
effective conservation biologists
is currently run in collaboration with National Centre for Biological Sciences ( NCBS) and Tata Institute of Fundamental Research ( TIFR)
|