hyderabad following a spate of tiger killings by poachers and spurt in timber smuggling in recent times forest and police departments officials are embarking on an ambitious exercise to geotag repeat offenders to curb offences in the foreststhis decision was taken at a video conference on monday where senior forest officials police including fieldlevel officials and forest beat officers discussed ways to curb offences and protect the states forest covergeotagging repeat offenders entails identifying each repeat offender taking his or her fingerprint and photograph and geotagging their locationkeeping our forests safe and increasing the green cover is going to be the chief ministers priority for the next five years we need to work accordingly said sk joshi chief secretaryopening new checkposts on forest roads and providing armed police cover to forest officials was also discussed joshi further instructed the officials that by february 6 the forest protection forces should be ready in all districtswe will also use police intelligence to crack the whip on the smugglers as well as the poachers and work on a new law with stringent norms to protect forests he saidspeaking at the video conference director general of police dgp mahender reddy assured the forest officials of assistance from the police department at all levels to protect the foreststhere should be a strict vigil on saw mills across the state and make sure that cctv cameras are installed an officials said