India: The cams, set up to study animal behaviour, captured armed poachers with two country-made rifles

As many as nine people were arrested from Sangameshwar in Ratnagiri district for allegedly poaching two mouse deer after they were caught moving around in the jungle by camera traps installed in Chandoli forests, which are part of the Sahyadri tiger reserve in Western Maharashtra.

These poachers were armed with two country-made rifles and other weapons. The forest department has set up camera traps in the reserve to monitor happenings in the jungle and study animal behaviour. On examining the memory card of a camera trap set up at Chandel in the core area of the Chandoli national park, photos and video clips of six people roaming around at night with guns for hunting were found to have been captured. They had entered the area illegally.

The officials filed a first information report and launched a probe. "After we captured these images in the camera traps, we gathered intelligence and zeroed down on a village in Sangameshwar in Ratnagiri where the suspects hailed from. Our guards stayed there incognito and arrested them last month. These suspects later confessed to poaching two mouse deer (Chevrotains) for meat and revealed other names. We have arrested a total of nine people," said a forest department official, adding that the accused, who had been booked under the Wildlife Protection Act, 1972, were now out on bail.

Two country-made guns, a curved machete, flash-lights and sticks were recovered from the accused. The official added that this was the first time that a case of poaching was detected in the Sahyadri tiger reserve due to camera traps. Two of those arrested are minors who were presented before the juvenile justice board. V Clement Ben, chief conservator of forests and field director of the Sahyadri tiger project, confirmed that they had arrested nine people for hunting mouse deer and prosecuted them using camera trap images.

Ben said they had installed 225 camera traps in grids in the tiger reserve and planned to add another 100 this year at spots like nallahs and waterholes where animal movement took place. The Sahyadri tiger project is spread over the Koyna wildlife sanctuary and Chandoli national park and spans Satara, Sangli, Kolhapur and parts of Ratnagiri. The inviolate core area of the reserve is spread over these two protected area. It has a total area of 1,165.56sqkm, including a 600.12sqkm core and 565.45sqkm buffer zone. It has recorded the presence of just around seven tigers.

(Source: DNA india)