The arrest of two persons with tiger skin in Nagarahole on Saturday brings to the fore the growing threat of poachers who may have turned their gaze to the remote interiors of southern Karnataka, where the numbers of these animals are on the rise.
It also underlines the urgency of filling the nearly 50 per cent vacancies in the Forest Department, as the existing staff in the core tiger areas such as Bandipur, Nagarahole, Bhadra etc. are preoccupied in preventing or fighting forest fires.
Forest fires, contrary to popular belief, are not natural and are deliberately stoked, and facilitate the timber mafia or poachers to strike and escape, according to a wildlife activist. Hence the imperatives of filling the existing vacancies at the field level, he added.
Against a sanctioned posts of 765 range forest officer in the State, 188 are vacant but only 153 deputy range forest officers’ posts have been filled against the sanctioned strength of 2,734, leaving 1,181 posts vacant.
Similarly, the sanctioned strength for forest guards, who constitute the mainstay for protection, is 3,994 posts as against which 1,056 are vacant.
Given the sensitivity of the Bandipur-Nagarahole landscape, which is spread over nearly 1,500 sq km and harbours nearly 1,500 to 2,000 elephants and 180 to 220 tigers, wildlife activists reiterate the imperatives of filling the existing vacancies of field staff to strengthen protection measures.
But as senior Forest Department officials themselves point out, very few new recruits are prepared to work in wildlife wings for an extended period of time. Hence, law has been modified to ensure a promotion in case of continuous stay in one range for five years as an incentive.
Conservator of Forests S. Manikandan said that the spurt in forest fires with 11 incidents at D.B. Kuppe close to the junction of four ranges on Friday, and poisoning of deer herd indicate that there is a pattern behind such incidents to divert the attention of the staff, and investigations are on to ascertain as to who was behind it.
Though the two persons arrested in Saturday’s incident are locals and one of them has a history of forest-related offences such as timber smuggling, sandalwood felling etc., officials suspect that they could be pawns in the hands of an organised group.
This in turn could be linked to an intricate network of international gangs that thrive on animal derivatives such as ivory and tiger parts that are smuggled out to South East Asia and mainland China to cater to the local demand though they are illegal.
