The olive-green fatigue with bullet-proof vest and helmet, binoculars or night-vision glasses, wireless set, a pair of boots, maps and of course, a lethal weapon.

Till recently, these were more or less all that a soldier of Indian Army donned and carried, while guarding the frontiers.

Not any more though.

These days a soldier patrolling the India-China border in Arunachal Pradesh has to carry a field notebook with pictures of some rare wildlife species. And apart from being alert to detect incursions from across the disputed Line of Actual Control (LAC), he has to look around for those animals and birds too.

The Indian Army is helping the World Wildlife Fund (WWF) in documenting some rare and threatened animals and birds known to occur in the border State. The soldiers have been given field notebooks with pictures of 15 rare animals, such as the Red Panda, Himalayan Black Bear and Snow Leopard. The notebooks also have pictures of four rare birds.

“The Army officers and soldiers carry the notebooks, whenever they go to the far-flung areas for patrolling along the border,” said Pijush Kumar Dutta of WWF-India.

The notebooks mention features by which the soldiers could easily identify rare animals and birds. “If a soldier spots any of the animals or birds, he would note down time and date of the sighting,” said Mr Dutta.

The WWF-India conducted workshops for the army officials and soldiers at Tenga and Tawang in western Arunachal Pradesh to make them aware about the rich fauna, flora and wetland diversity of the area.

The initial feedbacks are expected by the end of next month, when the soldiers would return the notebooks to the WWF-India for analysis and compilation of the data and finally preparation of a comprehensive report.

The report will help WWF-India know about the habitat and distribution of the endangered wildlife species and to develop long-term conservation plan jointly with the Army.

“We sought help from the Army, because vast areas in the region are accessible only to the soldiers,” said Mr Dutta.

What spurred the global body to initiate conservation efforts in Arunachal Pradesh are the recent sightings of several rare, near-extinct and previously unknown wildlife species, like Leaf Deer (Muntiacus putaoensis), Black Barking Deer (Muntiacus crinifrons) and Chinese Goral (Nemorhaedus caudatus) – a primitive mountain goat – in the state.