Deputy Chief Minister and Minister for Environment & Forests K. Pawan Kalyan told officials of the Forest Department to prepare an action plan for setting up an advanced Integrated Command and Control Centre (ICCC) at Aranyaramam, near Mangalagiri, for the sake of protecting forests and wildlife, similar to the facility that exists in Karnataka.

In a review meeting on Thursday, Mr. Pawan Kalyan said forest mapping and digital surveillance should be done on wildlife movements and forest activities on a full scale through the proposed ICCC. He noted that a team from Andhra Pradesh had recently studied the IT policies, GIS, mobile applications, ICCC, and other systems followed by the Karnataka Forest Department and submitted a detailed report thereof.

The ICCC is intended to monitor all activities from a single place, including the maintenance of geo-spatial dashboards, drone-based surveys, real-time analysis of wildlife numbers through camera traps, tracking of vehicles traveling along forest routes and keeping a tab of patrolling parties, forest fires and human-wildlife conflicts.

Mr. Kalyan observed that impressive results were being achieved by the e-Gastu mobile application of the Karnataka Forest Department, and suggested that a similar facility be developed in the State and its integration with the Forest Portal and Single Sign-On systems, which were already under implementation.

Published - August 20, 2026 07:53 pm IST