Hyderabad: The Telangana Forest Department on Sunday (July 14) said that it planned to take up digitisation of forest boundaries like in Karnataka and Odisha to address disputes about forest land in several areas.

The disputes revolve around whether the particular area was forest land or revenue land, Telangana principal chief conservator of forests PK Jha said.

Speaking to reporters, Jha said that the government has taken feedback from Karnataka, which has done geo-referencing of their forest boundaries and Odisha, which has taken up a massive programme to digitise forest boundaries.

"We are also going to prepare a similar plan to digitise the forest boundaries and freeze it to ensure there is no dispute in the future about it," Jha said.

He was speaking on the sidelines of a two-day workshop on "Initiative and Innovations in the Forestry Sector", organised by the Telangana Forest Department, which saw the participation of chief foresters of Karnataka, Maharashtra, Andhra Pradesh, Tamil Nadu and Kerala.

To a query on the June 30 incident at Kagaznagar, where a woman Forest Range Officer (FRO) and some staff were allegedly attacked, Jha said the incident had brought awareness among people on the difficulties involved in a forester's job.

"The fact is that our job is very, very difficult. We have to sometimes fight with armed people, and we don't have arms. Awareness building is more important than carrying any weapon that can only supplement (our efforts). The biggest strength has to be from society," Jha said.

FRO C Anitha was injured after she was allegedly attacked by a group led by the brother of a ruling TRS MLA at Sarsala village in Kumuram Bheem Asifabad district over a land issue.

She had gone to the village with her staff and police for plantation on land under a compensatory afforestation scheme for Kaleshwaram lift irrigation project when she was attacked.

Koneru Krishna Rao, brother of Tirupur TRS MLA Koneru Konappa and 13 others were arrested for the assault.

Both Anitha and the Kagaznagar forest divisional officer have been provided armed security, police had said.

Maharashtra principal chief conservator of Forests, UK Agarwal, who also spoke, said the tiger population in their state had increased to 240 from 103 in the 2006 census.

Besides this, there are 82 cubs/sub-adults as per the recent census.