Crackdown on tiger poachers, 11 held

A network of tiger poachers spanning across four states has been unearthed with the arrest of eleven members of three gangs in the last fortnight. Skin of eight leopard and tigers and five kilogram of bones have been seized from them. Chetan Chauhan reports.

Updated on: Feb 9, 2012, 22:55:16 IST

Hindustan Times | By Chetan Chauhan, New Delhi

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A network of tiger poachers spanning across four states has been unearthed with the arrest of eleven members of three gangs in the last fortnight. Skin of eight leopard and tigers and five kilogram of bones have been seized from them.

Their claim of killing eight to ten tigers in less than six months, which is about 40 percent of poaching incidents big cat deaths during the period, has caused panic.

"Their claim is alarming and we are verifying it," said a senior Wildlife Crime Control Bureau (WCCB) official. About 18 tiger deaths, of which five were killed this January, have been reported in last one year.

Rise in tiger population from 1,411 to 1,706 in less than a year has pushed the big cats to the protected core areas, thereby making them vulnerable to poaching.

The WCCB officers arrested Dharambir and his four accomplices on Thursday from Bijnore, Uttar Pradesh, and seized skin of four leopards and one tiger.

The animals were apparently killed with the help of iron traps in Corbett Tiger Reserve and Rajaji National Park in Uttarakhand.

They have claimed to have transported two consignments to an wildlife dealer in Delhi, identified as Lavi Singh. They were caught with animal parts in Haridwar.

WCCB officials believe that the consignment was meant for sale in the international market. Belinda Wright of NGO Wildlife Protection Society of India said the price of tiger parts has increased manifold in the international market. We have seen a sudden spurt in demand in the last few weeks which may be the cause of increase in poaching and seizures," she said.

The WCCB probe has confirmed Wright's apprehension after the arrest of a person and the seizure of tiger skin by customs officials in Siliguri, West Bengal. The probe has revealed that tigers were killed in Madhya Pradesh, Odisha and Chhattisgarh also.

The WCCB has been able to establish the links with Siliguri seizure with the network of poachers in these three states.

The officials are also trying to link the arrest of five persons in Kerala and the recovery of a leopard and tiger skin from them with international wildlife smugglers.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Chetan Chauhan
Chetan Chauhan is the National Affairs Editor looking into all aspects of news and features from across India. A Chevening scholar with over three decades of experience in reporting and news management, Chetan has extensively covered all important aspects of the social sector, political economy, environment and climate change nationally and internationally. He did a journalism course at the Reuters Institute of Journalism in Oxford and Digital Media training at Nanyang Technological University in Singapore. He started as a reporter with The Statesman in 1996 and joined the Hindustan Times in 2000 in the metro bureau covering environment, crime and Delhi politics. He covered hot local news, from the Jessica Lal murder case to the rebellion of Delhi Congress MLAs against then Chief Minister Sheila Dikshit, to the replacement of toxic vehicle fuel with cleaner compressed natural gas (CNG) in the national capital. Some of his stories on air pollution became part of the Supreme Court’s landmark MC Mehta versus Government of India case in the National Capital Region (NCR), forcing the government to take corrective measures. As part of the national political bureau since 2004, he covered important central sectors such as environment, education, social justice, labour, rural development, water resources, renewable energy, agriculture, broadcasting and the Planning Commission for more than a decade producing several exclusive and investigative breaking stories. His specialisation is the environment, having covered at least a dozen United Nations global conferences on climate change, biodiversity and wildlife including climate summits in Paris, Copenhagen and Bali. He also covered India’s two five-year plans ---11th and 12th and reported on drafting and execution of right based laws such as Right to Education, Right to Information and rural job guarantee law, MG-NREGA, now being introduced in new format as VG-RAM-G Act. He has in-depth knowledge of social sector issues. He was one of the first to report on tigers vanishing from Sariska and Panna wildlife reserves in 2004 and 2008, respectively, leading to the setting up of the National Tiger Conservation Authority (NTCA) and the introduction of stringent penal provisions for poaching. He has written extensively on the rising human-animal conflict in India and the degradation of India’s biodiversity hotspots because of mining and other activities. Since 2004, Chetan has covered Parliament comprehensively and participated in training on the nuanced coverage of Parliament proceedings. He has travelled extensively across India to cover national and provincial elections since 1998, especially in the Hindi heartland states, considered India’s road to power. He writes a regular column for Hindustan Times, Ecostani, on important national politics, economy, Himalayan ecology and environmental issues. His other responsibilities include providing inputs for edits and edit page articles for the publication, apart from managing news flow from across India.Read More

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