Wildlife officials foil poaching attempt, 2 held
India: Wildlife officials arrested a poacher and his aide and seized two country-made guns from him in Baisilipali in Mahanadi wildlife division on Friday. The forest personnel apprehended him red-handed while attempting to kill a wild boar.
According to divisional forest officer (Mahanadi division) Anshu Pragyan Das said based on intelligence inputs, forest personnel tracked the movement of poachers and caught them before killing the animal. "While we seized one gun from him during the raid, another gun was seized from his house on his information," she said. The poacher was identified as Giridhari Nayak of Boudh district and his aide is Bibhuti Pradhan.
Recently, to get information about poachers, timber mafia and cow traffickers, the officials engaged undercover informers. The informers comprise villagers living adjoining the sanctuary, which are prone to poaching. This is being done to get information quickly and act accirdingly. Before the poachers kill an animal, the anti-poaching squad tracks the poachers. The informers are paid reward money to encourage them to help the wildlife officers.
"We are getting early information and detaining the traffickers. In the past three months, we have booked around 52 people for poaching, smuggling of timber and cow trafficking," said the senior wildlife officer.
Meanwhile, the Mahanadi division has plans to have six more anti-poaching camps and two watch towers at vantage points where monitoring will be smooth. Currently, there are nine anti-poaching camps. Besides, two such camps are running temporarily at the quarters of forest guards.
In another development, the sanctuary authorities have demarcated areas for grazing of livestock to reduce biotic pressure on the sanctuary. Collection of firewood and livestock grazing degenerates forest cover and in the long run, it may lead to severe pressure on the biosphere.
"Apart from demarcating areas, whereby livestock grazing will be limited only to some portion of buffer zone, we have started distributing LPG cyclinders to BPL families living in adjoining villages of the sanctuary to divert them from collecting firewood. Nayagarh district administration is lending support for the LPG distribution," Das said.
