Anatomy of an Unsuccessful Project: The Tiger and the Thermal Camera

Early in October, a former colleague and current field biologist with one of our NGO partners called me, and when I didn’t answer, sent me a message. “Hi. Trying to contact you for some help. Please call me when you are free”. It was Ashtami, the 8th day of Durga Puja, and I was on leave in Calcutta, visiting puja pandals across the city. We take our holidays at TfW quite seriously, and amidst all the festivities, unable and unwilling to take a call, I asked him to send me a voice note or an email.

The email arrived. “Hope this email finds you well. This is to inform you that a tiger has killed two people in Valmiki Tiger Reserve [The only Tiger Reserve in Bihar]. These incidents happened on the fringe area of forest and sugarcane fields. Bihar Forest Department is trying to capture this animal using box trap cages and chemical immobilization method. Forest department has placed rescue teams and also installed several trap cages. It's difficult to locate the animal in the sugarcane field. We would need a drone with IR/thermal camera to locate the animals. Is it possible for you to visit and assist the rescue team of the forest department in tracking and locating the tigers in the sugarcane field?”

This sort of request is familiar to us; we’ve managed field operations for a similar project in Uttar Pradesh in 2017, and know of numerous other similar projects across India. However, at this point in time, we do not own our own drone+thermal camera. Aside from the prohibitive cost (~INR 6 lakhs), our core function as an organisation is not to respond to emergencies, but to help our partners amplify their conservation impact. However, receiving this request almost made me feel guilty about not acquiring our own drone+thermal camera.

However, It turned out that there was already a drone + thermal camera in the field, but with some software issues. It was now Dashami, the final day of Durga Puja. I took some time out before the day started to provide trouble-shooting advice via text messages. I was later informed that they were not able to get this drone to work.

The next day, with both Durga Puja and my holidays over, another former colleague at the same organisation messaged me: “Can you help with drone services there or get someone else who can on an emergency basis.” The message continued with the news that a young girl had been killed that morning, and that it was only a matter of time before the Forest Department would need to shoot the tiger dead. Locating the tiger was of the utmost importance, either to tranquilise it or to kill it, ideally before it killed more people.

As part of India Flying Labs, and with links to the Drone Federation of India, we are embedded in India’s drone industry and have access to a large network of drone operators and manufacturers. I put the word out that there was an urgent conservation mission in rural Bihar that needed at least one drone + thermal camera as well as trained operators. In terms of work, this involved numerous phone calls, emails and text messages, as well as assessments on our part of how capable we felt a drone operator was of working on this particular project. I finally spoke to someone from an organisation who, in our opinion, had the capacity to help. I gave them the full project brief, and then connected them to my former colleagues. Later the same day, the tiger killed another person.

The next evening, when I called the field biologist to check on the situation and how he was, he said, “Not good”. The tiger had killed a mother and her pre-teen son early in the morning, and had been shot dead during a Forest Department operation in the afternoon. This particular tiger, designated a man-eater and posthumously identified as the three-year old male T104, had killed between 9 and 12 people (there are conflicting reports), with four confirmed kills in its last three days alive. The impact of his actions on Bihar’s tiger conservation efforts will manifest in the future, and they are unlikely to be positive in any way. It is unlikely that these recent events have helped convince local communities around Valmiki Tiger Reserve that tiger conservation is in their best interests.

I wasn’t in the field for this project; my role was purely to network and connect people who believed that they needed drone services urgently with those who would possibly be able to provide it. In the end, matters escalated rapidly, and concluded before additional resources were allocated. I’m too removed from the situation to assess whether a working drone + thermal camera would have helped locate the tiger earlier, preventing the later human deaths. The fact remains that we’ll never know; many people, and a tiger, are now dead.

Note: The email and text exchanges detailed have been edited to maintain the senders’ anonymity.

Using PARIVESH for effective conservation advocacy

The following article authored by Pakhi Das, Shashank Srinivasan, Nancy Alice, Ashwathy Satheesan, Nandini Mehrotra and Anand Srinivasan was first published as ‘The PARIVESH Portal: Pros, Cons And How To Use’ by Sanctuary Asia on 03rd August, 2022.

Until July 15, 2014, the process for any development project to obtain a green clearance in India involved several stages - the circulation of physical project files between different officials at multiple stages of approval. File access was limited to the government, the applicants seeking green clearances, and the authorities granting approvals. Moreover, the complex nature of clearance processes and the lack of accountability created a lack of trust in the process.

To remedy this and to ensure better transparency and efficiency in the clearance process, the Ministry of Environment, Forest and Climate Change (MoEFCC) has established the PARIVESH website.

PARIVESH stands for Pro-Active Responsive facilitation by Interactive and Virtuous Environmental Single-window Hub. It is a web-based, workflow application that has digitised the entire process of submission and monitoring of Environment, Forest, Wildlife, and Coastal Regulation Zone (CRZ) Clearance proposals submitted by proponents to the Central, State, and District Level authorities. The portal allows project proponents to register themselves and submit applications for various green clearances in digital formats. Although seemingly designed for project proponents, PARIVESH has become a valuable resource of collated information that is open for viewing by the general public.

There are currently more than 10,000 land-use proposals submitted for clearance at the MoEFCC in India, ranging from the construction of multi-state national highways to the establishment of small-scale cottage industries. Various government officers and committees are assessing the potential impact of these proposed projects before granting approval.

The Benefits

The PARIVESH website hosts an enormous amount of information about all old and new projects seeking green clearances, organised by state, year, category and stage of approval. The information comprises spatial data regarding the outlines of the project site location and alignment, the area of forest land being diverted, site inspection, and biodiversity assessment reports. Such information is of immense value for conservation and is freely available on the portal.

Using the appropriate search functions, project information concerning any given project is available for viewing or, in some cases, even downloading. The portal also hosts details of discussions of various expert committees through the agenda and meeting minutes, allowing people from outside the system to view and analyse the processes that ultimately affect India’s wildlife and environment. All the relevant information is presented as an application package with downloadable file attachments, which could prove beneficial for conservation research and advocacy. The quantity and variety of information on the portal make it a treasure trove for anyone and everyone interested in the green clearance space of India.

Information that can be found on the PARIVESH website about any development project in India:

1. Area sought for clearance
2. Project cost
3. Spatial information about project location in KML (Keyhole Markup Language) format, details of the land required for clearance such as forest division names, area of forest and non-forest land, village and district wise breakup of the total proposed land, etc.
4. Details of Project Proponent/User Agency
5. Cost Benefit Analysis undertaken
6. Status/links to associated environmental or wildlife clearance (if any)
7. Project plan/ feasibility reports/ site inspection reports

Non-user Friendly Interface

While introducing PARIVESH for digitising the green clearance process in India helps to bring about transparency and accountability in the system, the portal is not user-friendly and is cumbersome to navigate.

The system should be able to streamline important projects and allow easy access to relevant information however, most of the files are not appropriately tagged, making the search options unreliable. To be able to ‘find’ specific projects within a timeframe, the user must know specific project details such as the exact name of the project, project file number, and the clearance level.

Additionally, green clearances are complex processes and involve multiple levels of reviews and recommendations from various government departments. These processes are broadly divided into three clearance verticals, namely Environmental Clearance, Forests Clearance, and Wildlife Clearance. Each of these verticals has its own set of processes and organisation hierarchies that the project file must circulate through at the level of first the state and then the centre. In the instance that a user is able to trace the details of a particular project on the platform, comprehending what stage of approval that project could be at and what that stage of approval entails is a task in itself.

Problems with the PARIVESH website

1. Low Discoverability: Navigating through the PARIVESH portal is complicated as information is not organised uniformly across types/categories and sometimes even regarding regions.
2. Decision Fatigue: Because of the structure of the portal, too many steps are involved in obtaining a particular project’s information
3. Inappropriate Project Tagging: Proposals, projects or additional attached documents are not appropriately tagged, which makes finding them using the search function cumbersome.
4. Complexities of the Clearance Processes: The complexities of the clearance processes and organisational hierarchies make access to information additionally difficult. The portal does not describe the various stages of approval under different clearances.

How Can This Be Improved?

For effective conservation advocacy, knowledge of potential areas of intervention is crucial, which makes a clear understanding of what happens at each level of approval imperative.

Simple features, such as an option to view projects cumulatively across the clearance types, or to view projects on a spatial platform, would increase the efficiency of the portal manifold. The dashboards for different types/verticals of clearances use abbreviations for the stages of approval with no description of what those abbreviations stand for nor what each of those stages entails, thus creating a limitation in the understanding of the clearance procedures altogether. Furthermore, there is a lack of features that would allow users interested in specific projects to subscribe or receive notifications for any updates on the approvals.

PARIVESH, although perhaps designed for project proponents seeking clearances, has been a useful portal for other stakeholders. The inclusion of features such as these would revolutionise accessing vast amounts of publicly available data for all stakeholders and will allow them to be more involved.

To truly achieve the goal of increased transparency and efficiency in the green clearance process in India, providing better access to information is key. India has a growing population of aware citizens from an array of backgrounds and a better system would greatly empower them to play an active role in determining the future of the environment, forests, and wildlife of the country.

Flowchart illustrating an user agency’s process in PARIVESH.

How to Use PARIVESH: A step-by-step guide with tips

PARIVESH hosts a large volume of project information, which is of immense use for awareness, campaigning or advocacy. However, navigating the portal to get to relevant information often involves many steps. It is important to narrow down search to the farthest extent possible by applying relevant filters. One might also have to scan through multiple project forms and verify information from other media articles and web reports. However, if a project is cleared, it is mandatory for it to have gone through PARIVESH, and information about it must be available on the portal. Here's how to access this information.

Step 1: Make a list of all the known information about the project one is seeking information on

For example, let us do so for the Etalin Hydropower Project.

Critical known information about Etalin hydropower project
- State name: Arunachal Pradesh
- Area: Dibang Valley
- Project Proponent: Jindal Power Ltd.
- Category of Project: Hydroelectric/hydel
- Date proposed: Before 2016 (although not crucial, it is often helpful to review other existing information/media reports about the project of interest. Information such as the timeline of the project helps in narrowing down search)

Step 2: Explore PARIVESH Portal

Note: All projects proposed on PARIVESH are organised according to the type of clearance sought into three categories -- environment, forest and wildlife clearance.

To find information, each of these types can be explored independently. The following sections provide a step by step guide to navigating the portal.

For Forest Clearance
1. Open https://parivesh.nic.in/ homepage, scroll down and select ‘Forest Clearance’.

2. To view all forest clearance projects, select ‘Dashboard’ option on the header.

3. Once clicked dashboard, apply filters to narrow down search filters such as state, category and hit search.

Note: Projects under forest clearance on PARIVESH are organised in two categories - Stage I and Stage II. If the status of clearance of the project is known, lead search by that status. However, if this information is not known, explore both stages.

4. To view all Stage 1 projects, click on the ‘Form A part II, Under Stage I’ button on the dashboard. As seen below, there are a total of 12 hydel projects proposed in Arunachal Pradesh, which are currently under stage 1.

5. Click on ‘ACCEPTED’ (these are all the relevant projects according to the applied filters).

6. A dataset of all projects as per the chosen category will be displayed with unique project IDs, and other relevant information, which should allow one to review and identify the project of interest.

Things to note while trying to identify project of interest:
(i) Is the project proponent the same as known information? Eg. Jindal Power Ltd.
(ii) Is the forest division/area the same as known information? Eg. Dibang Valley.
(iii) Is the project proposed in the known timeline? Eg. 2015.

(Screen grab of all hydel projects in Arunachal as on May 5, 2022)

7. Each project has a corresponding form, which hosts information about the project.
To view this information and to recognise project of interest, click on magnifying glass icon under column titled ‘View Report on Allocation of Fresh Forest Land (Form-A) Part-I’

8. The Form A part I includes information such as the forest division details, area for clearance, spatial data, additional documents, etc. all in downloadable formats.

9. All the documents and the form itself can be downloaded as PDFs. It is important to note that until the project is granted final clearance, the proponents can make edits, add or delete files on the portal.

Note: The precedent blogpost on decoding and navigating PARIVESH can be read here.

How-To: Carry UAVs through Indian airport security in 2022

TL:DR - Pack the UAVs in check-in luggage. Pack the controllers + batteries in cabin baggage. Empty out the contents of the cabin baggage into the tray while passing through security.

Note: This is a brief post describing our learnings regarding the transport of UAVs through Indian airport security in 2022. It is written in the hope that it helps other Indian UAV users navigate airport security without delay. I don’t think this will apply to non-Indian UAV operators, especially if they don’t present as Indian.

At Technology for Wildlife Foundation, one of our core operations is the use of robots (both Unmanned Aerial Vehicles and Unmanned Underwater vehicles) for conservation data acquisition purposes. For some projects, our partners send us data they’ve collected using their own devices. However, for others, it is imperative that we be on site with our equipment. This occasionally necessitates the transport of our robots across the country. For sites close to our base in Goa, India, we travel by either road or by rail. For these modes of transport, our primary concern is to package the equipment securely to avoid damage during transit. While traveling by air, however, we need to put much more thought into transporting our equipment.

As of November 2021, UAV users in India have a clear set of guidelines to follow, in the form of the Drone Rules 2021. As UAVs have become more mainstream, the security establishment is also formalising and mainstreaming processes around UAVs. To transport drones within the country, the Central Industrial Security Force (CISF), who manage security at most of India’s airports, now seem to have guidelines on how to process UAVs at domestic airport security checkpoints.  

Based on whether baggage is being carried in the cargo hold or in the passenger cabin, there are two categories of baggage on flights: cabin, which accompanies the passenger, and check-in, which goes into the hold. In brief, drone batteries and controllers (which contain fixed batteries) must be carried in the passenger cabin, while the drones themselves (without any batteries) must be carried in the cargo hold. If the controller batteries are removable, the controllers can also go into check-in baggage, which may be required depending on the size and weight of the controller. UAVs with fixed batteries cannot be carried on domestic airlines.

Pack the drones carefully, in a locked piece of luggage, as they will be out of sight passing through the luggage handling process, which can be rough on fragile items. The check-in luggage is deposited at the counter. In the past, with other robotic devices, we have informed the check-in staff that there are complex devices within the luggage. I personally have been called to check-in luggage security to verify what exactly the device is. Informing the check-in staff that the luggage contains UAVs without batteries is not required by regulations. While it may be helpful, it may also invite additional unnecessary scrutiny and is not something that we have felt the need to do regularly.

When going through security with our cabin baggage, we place every single piece of electronic equipment into the security tray that passes through the conveyor belt. When security staff have enquired as to the purpose of the devices, a straightforward answer of either “batteries”, or “drone batteries and controllers, but the drones have been checked-in”, has sufficed so far. We also carry paperwork that describes how the drones are to be used and have been used in the past; for us specifically, these consist of permission letters from the Forest Department.  

At some point in late 2021 or early 2022, posters depicting what cannot be carried as cabin baggage have been expanded to include drones as an additional item at the bottom of the poster. We’ll update this post with a photo of the poster the next time we have the opportunity. In the meanwhile, do let us know about your own experiences transporting UAVs by air in the comment section.