Forest department to plug existing vacancies

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BANGALORE: The state Forest Department is on a mass recruitment drive to fill up its existing vacancies of forest staff.Rec..

BANGALORE: The state Forest Department is on a mass recruitment drive to fill up its existing vacancies of forest staff.
Recruitment for 125 Range Forest Officers (RFOs), 500 forest guards, 100 foresters and about 200 wildlife watchers will be completed by 2012. "This is for the first a time mass recruitment is being done," said R K Srivastava, Conservator of Forests (HQ), Karnataka Forest Department.Though the Department has been recruiting on a regular basis for the past five years, the number of posts filled was not enough. He said, "Recruitments for 63 of the 125 RFOs will be done in 2011 and the remainder by 2012end. 500 forest guards and 100 foresters will also be recruited by this yearend."

In keeping with the rules of Ministry of Environment and Forests (MoEF), a Special Tiger Protection Force (STPF) comprising 227 wildlife watchers will also be recruited.

Speaking to Express on recruitment of wildlife watchers, he said, "About 50 per cent of the wildlife watchers will be recruited from the local tribal areas around the Project Tiger Wildlife areas of Bandipur, Hunsur, Bhadra and Dandeli.

At present, the state Forest Department is running short of forest guards. Said another forest official on condition of anonymity, "There are about 2,893 forest beats and one forest guard is in charge of about 14.99 sq km of forest area. One forest guard can handle only about 6 sq km of forest area."

Meanwhile, a fivemember committee constituted by the MoEF has also drawn up a

In keeping with the ecological perspective, and differential requirement of officers by state forest area, statelevel recruitment of frontline forest staff has also been planned for.