Dhenkanal: Once regarded as safe havens for wild animals, the jungles in Dhenkanal district have turned into poachers’ paradise, causing headache to the forest department.
The figures shared by the forest department are testimony to why the district has earned the dubious distinction.
Between September and November 27, as many as 32 hunters were arrested from eight ranges. Of them, three were arrested from Dhenkanal Sadar range, nine from Kapilas range, two from Sarangi range, five from Hindol range, three from Kamakhynagar Eastern range, four from Kamakhyanagar Western range and six from Mahabirod range. Amongst the weapons and animal body parts seized from their possession include ten rifles, 15 live bullets, bows and arrows, deer hide, deer antlers, Sambar deer antlers, two pieces of tusk, electric wires used for hunting and some amounts of venison and flesh of other hunted animals.
With Kapilas range reporting the maximum number of poaching cases, the forest department is presently learnt to be under tremendous pressure.
Kapilas range is known not only for elephants but also for a wide range of animals, including some endangered ones. The poachers here use the easiest way to hunt animals, by laying live electric wires. There were instances in the past wherein elephants got electrocuted after coming in contact with these live wires.
Similarly, the number of hunting cases involving deer and wild boar has also increased in the jungle close to Deogaon-Tangi road under Gandia police limits. The hunters’ modus operandi is to lay live wire at nights, collect hunted animals the next morning and then sell their flesh in nearby areas. The entire process is carried out so clandestinely that the forest department hardly gets any inkling of these cases. There are also cases of hunters being killed after coming in contact with the live wires. In one of such incidents reported from Mahabirod area last month, a youth had died.
Some animal lovers are of the opinion that the poaching cases can be checked or, at the very least, brought down if the intelligence system works perfectly, night patrolling is intensified and exemplary punishment is handed out to the accused.
When contacted, Dhenkanal DFO Prakash Chandra Gugnani said poaching incidents have increased in the last few months. We have taken some immediate steps and our efforts are on to stop hunting. The range officers and employees have been directed to intensify raids, he added.
PNN
