For Steven Galster, Director of Field Operations of Thailand-based Wildaid Foundation, though elephants have fallen prey to poachers, the threat to the pachyderm population can be contained with proper training and capacity building as it is at an early stage.

Galster, an ace wildlife investigator and trainer par excellence on wildlife crime control, has offered his services for at least a weeklong training to the wildlife and police officials in Orissa.

He said the wildlife officials are serious in their approach to nab the culprits. According to sources, officials have collected all the information on the 40 elephant deaths reported in the State during the last three months, half of which was the handiwork of poachers. And, in all most all these cases, the tusks and other essential parts of the elephants were removed in the most gruesome manner, which experts say can only be the handiwork of poachers. In some cases, usage of new tools to excavate the tusks has also been observed, which indicates the involvement of international ivory smuggling rings.

Alarmed by the surge in poaching cases, the State Government has asked for Galster's help. In this critical juncture, the US Consulate General in Kolkata came to the rescue of the Government and invited Galster to extend his expertise in the field. Karuna Singh, Programme Manager of the Consulate General, is taking a lot of interest to save the pachyderms in the State.

Galster belongs to the new breed of environmentalists who have broken with peace-loving green traditions and taken up arms to fight tiger traffickers. He took up the cause of Amur tigers in Russia by forming Inspection Tiger Rangers and saved the endangered species, which were being slaughtered at a rate of around 70 a year.

But in case of Orissa, he sees a different approach. He agrees with the State's Chief of Crime Branch BK Sharma that the poaching in the State can be contained by capacity building of the wildlife officials, who are in the forests all along.

Galster said that as the information on the poaching is in place, it is high time to act on the facts to nab the culprits. That is why capacity building is needed much. He is of view that for the local poacher's alternative livelihood necessary provisions would ease the problem in a big way.

In order to take stock of the ground situation, Galster went for a field visit to Satkosia wildlife sanctuary, where a number of elephants fell prey to the poachers.