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Monday, May 31, 2004

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Other States - Orissa

Elephant poachers run amuck

By Prafulla Das

BHUBANESWAR, MAY 30. Orissa's forests now reverberate with the booming sounds of guns as elephant poachers chase endangered tuskers to death. With the international black market ivory prices shooting up, the State's elephants are being systematically wiped out by determined bands of poachers, say conservationists.

On May 26, a dead tusker was found at Baniabandha forests of Athgarh Forest Division with 12 bullet wounds. Its tusks had been hacked off. This year, six tuskers have been shot dead by poaching gangs in Athmalik, Angul, Dhenkanal and Athgarh forest divisions.

An inter-State poaching gang from Manipur had killed five tuskers in Kalahandi and Rayagada districts before the Forest Department finally arrested them in 2002.

Official records reveal that during the last 13 years, poachers in Orissa have killed at least 181 tuskers. The State is home to 1,841 elephants as per the census done in 2002 by the Forest Department.

Orissa is the most important elephant habitat containing the bulk of the over 2,200 elephants in the region. Elephants are found in Similipal, Keonjhar, Dhenkanal, Satkosia, Kotagarh, Kapilas, Athmalik, Rairakhol, Sambalpur and Deogarh forests of the State.

With the State Government paying lip service to wildlife conservation, forest officials are clueless about the identity of the poachers and the trade routes by which ivory moves out of the State, says Biswajit Mohanty, a conservationist.

``We had submitted a proposal to the Government to set up a Wildlife Crime Control Cell that would collect details about poachers and their movements and conduct raids and investigations. But nothing has moved since the last eight years. The local range officers are ill-equipped and ill-trained to investigate wildlife crimes.''

The killing of an elephant is punishable by a jail term of seven years as per the Wildlife Protection Act, 1972. ``Even if culprits are arrested, there is no effort by the Forest Department to ensure their punishment,'' Mr. Mohanty says. ``Due to lack of sincere steps, no punishment has been awarded to poachers who have been caught in the past.''

In 1991, Ganesh Jew, a resident of Baripada, was arrested with ivory. Due to inadequate legal steps by the Forest Department, the local trial court is yet to frame charges against him and the accused is out on bail.

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