Traditional iron traps create poaching scare in 29 tiger reserves: NTCA

Traditional way of catching tigers in wild – through snares – is back and has caught the forest department officials off-guard.

Updated on: May 3, 2012, 21:39:13 IST

Hindustan Times | By Chetan Chauhan, New Delhi

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Traditional way of catching tigers in wild – through snares – is back and has caught the forest department officials off-guard.

In just three months over 80 traps and snares have been recovered in two tigers reserves in Karnataka --- Bandipur and Nagarhole. Over 30 have been found in and around tiger areas in Uttarakhand and about 40 in Madhya Pradesh.

Wildlife poachers have been traditionally using snares and traps to hunt animals including tigers. But, fire-arms and poison was replacing the traditional method, which had seen a sudden return.

The apparent reason is the increasing demand of clean tiger skins and body parts in the international wildlife smuggling network. A firearms leaves a black spot on the skin and poison leads to change in colour of the skin and body parts. That does not happen in case of snares as a wild animal turns immobile and dies a slow death because of bleeding.

The tiger watchdog, the National Tiger Conservation Authority (NTCA), found that many wandering gangs were targeting tigers using snares and iron traps across 10 states in India. “The situation is serious and calls for urgent action to step up protection in tiger reserves,” said an advisory issued by NTCA member secretary Rajesh Gopal.

The field directors of 41 tiger reserves in India had been instructed to deploy special anti-poaching squads to patrol the reserves and look for snares and traps. They have been instructed to complete the exercise within a fortnight.

The NTCA has also said that forest guards should keep a track of tigers and their cubs, straying out of the tiger reserves as they could fall prey to poachers. Another location to keep vigil are the water-bodies, which tigers frequent.

The authority had also received intelligence reports that many gangs had visited villages around tiger reserves in the recent past to examine the possibility of killing a tiger. As many as 29 tiger reserves had been identified as potential threat from poachers. “We have instructed the forest departments to conduct a special exercise in these reserves,” Gopal said.

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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