Itanagar: In Tirap, villagers are helping turn a community forest into a living record of wildlife, using camera traps to support conservation.The Hinthong Foundation has launched a camera-trapping initiative to document and monitor wildlife in the community forest of New Tupi village in Arunachal Pradesh’s Tirap district, according to an official report.Conservationists Chajo Lowang and Sara Khongsai, co-founders of the Tirap-based non-profit, are leading the initiative. They have spent the last five years involving indigenous communities in ecological conservation efforts.Unlike conventional physical surveys, camera traps enable non-intrusive monitoring by recording species in their natural habitats without disturbing the ecosystem. Their installation involved 15 to 20 residents, including the village chief, youth leaders and community elders. Former Tirap deputy commissioner Techu Aran, who serves as an adviser to the foundation, also joined the deployment team.The preliminary fieldwork recorded wild boar and barking deer footprints, feeding sites, claw marks attributed to a Himalayan black bear and a pangolin burrow.Residents and field biologist Kime Obin of the Morey Conservation Foundation also reported hearing early-morning calls of the endangered hoolock gibbon.Obin served as the technical resource person for the deployment, guiding volunteers on camera placement and site selection. The Nature Conservation Foundation provided the camera traps.By placing conservation technology in the hands of local villagers, the foundation aims to combine scientific monitoring with traditional ecological knowledge and build long-term community stewardship of Tirap’s forests, the report said.
