It’s an old practice that seems to have made a comeback. The use of
snares and traps to hunt wildlife had always been a conventional
practice, one that had gradually given way to modern forms of poaching.
But if numbers are anything to go by, these are emerging as a preferred
form of catching wild animals in Karnataka. Over 80 traps and snares
have been recovered or dismantled by the state forest department in
Bandipur and Nagarhole national parks in the last three months.
The forest department has undertaken a major drive to tackle this
menace by weeding out traps and snares from protected areas. Since the
focus of anti-poaching drives usually is on well-equipped poachers, the
simple yet deadly means are ignored. This move, says Jose Louies,
programme manager with the Wildlife Trust of India (WTI), is a
“‘significant poaching prevention plan, as the morning strollscarried
out as part of this project also deters poachers.”
The forest
department is being assisted in this endeavour by WTI, with support from
the Care for the Wild International. The enforcement-related
intelligence gathering is being done by a network of WTI informers.
Voice for Wildlife, a Mysore-based group of lawyers, is also providing
assistance to the state forest department.
There is no precise
data available yet on the extent these snares and traps are used for
wildlife hunting. The problem, says Louies, had always been there, but
it is only now that the issue is coming to light. One of the possible
reasons for this could be that poachers find usage of firearms to be an
avoidable.
Sudheer K Shankar, lawyer and co-founder of Voice for
Wildlife, says, “Earlier, snares and traps were primarily used for
bushment (like pork). If an animal like a tiger or a leopard was caught,
that would be a bonus. The trend, however, has changed considerably. In
recent years, there have been many reports of big carnivores like
tigers and leopards being caught by these devices.”
Snares, on the
other hand, are both easy to make and hide (unlike a gun) and hard to
detect as well. Snares/ traps do not require heavy investments either.
One can install a snare and then keep on checking on it according to
one’s convenience. The snare remains silent in the forest until an
animal is trapped.
Those can remain undetected even by people passing by unless carefully looked for, or until an animal is trapped.
One
of the reasons for this drive is that snares and traps are more
dangerous than popularly perceived to be. They can both kill and
amputate animals. Their usageis, of course, not peculiar to
Karnataka - it is a problem across the country. Few people, however, are
ostensibly worried since these are not “visible”. The Karnataka Forest
Department is perhaps the first to realise the extent of this threat and
has undertaken this initiative to mitigate the problem.
“I am
glad that the threat is being taken seriously by the forest department.
Instead of catching the culprits, this programme is a preventive
practice,” says Shankar.
The modus operandi of the department
includes strategically-planned walks to locate snares/traps placed by
poachers. The details of the routes followed are kept secret. The “snare
walks” are carried out by the Special Tiger Protection Force (a unit
within forest department)members along with WTI staff, under the
supervision of the park manager / director. Every snare recovered is
GPS-tagged on a map and handed over to the range officer.
Precise records are maintained.The
process is not as easy as it sounds - anti-snare squads often have to
crawl through animal trails to detect the contraptions.
http://www.dnaindia.com/bangalore/report_poachers-now-prefer-snares-over-firearms_1683441
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