Thiruvananthapuram: The southern unit of the Wildlife Crime Control Bureau (WCCB) proposed by the Union Government to protect tigers and other endangered species will be based in Kochi, according to State Government officials.

Official sources said the WCCB would be modelled on the Narcotic Control Bureau (NCB) with powers to detect and investigate wildlife crimes. It would act as a nodal agency and work in tandem with State Forest Department, law enforcing agencies and Customs and Central Excise units in south India. The proposed unit would focus on poaching, smuggling of wildlife animals and their parts and products, illegal felling of valuable forest trees and misuse of forest cover for drug cultivation.

At a meeting with A. Raja, Union Minister for Environment and Forests, Kerala Forest Minister Benoy Viswom stressed the need to base the southern unit of the WCCB in Kerala. The Union Government had recently sent a letter to the Minister's office expressing its willingness to base the unit in Kochi, official sources said.

Increased poaching

The growing demand for the pelt of big cats as trophies, expensive gifts and home décor in certain South Asian countries resulted in increased poaching of tigers and leopards in south India. In 2005, the Forest Department had seized four tiger and two leopard pelts from suspected poachers. During the same period, the Tamil Nadu Forest Department seized two leopard skins from poachers in Pollachi. Elephant tusks were seized from Nenmara and Perinthalmanna. On October 29, 2006, forest enforcers at Nilambur in Malappuram district seized 300 beetles and butterflies, including the endangered Malabar Banded Swallow Tail butterfly, suspected to have been trapped for foreign collectors. Four persons from Gudalloor in Tamil Nadu were arrested in connection with the seizure. The Wildlife Protection Society of India (WPSI) website said there were 27 tiger skins, 199 leopard skins and 254 otter skin seizures in India and Nepal in the past one year alone.