The state has become a haven for poachers and smugglers, who kill wild animals to sell their hides and other body parts in national and international markets.

The ongoing armed insurgency in the state has provided a prefect cover to these poachers, who have been looting the fauna of the state for past many years and the wild life department has turned a mute spectator ruing that the department lacks staff and equipments to check the poaching of wild animals.

According to reliable sources, the poaching of wild animals, including snow leopards, leopards, deer, bear and various other wild animals and birds, is openly going on not only in far-off areas of the state but also in the wildlife reserves and sanctuaries.

The state, which boasts of its rich wildlife, is slowly losing what once used to be a major attraction for tourists from various parts of the world.

“Poaching is openly going on in various areas of the state and even animals are not safe in the wildlife sanctuaries and forest reserves,” an official of the state Wildlife Department said.

The official admitted that a larger nexus could be working behind the poaching of wild animals as it involves a huge amount of money.

“The skin and bones of snow leopards are in great demand in the international market. The illegal trade runs into crores of rupees so there could be an international racket operating behind all this,” the official said.

Officials of the state Wildlife Department blame the “lax attitude” of the successive state governments for not giving priority to reining in the menace of poaching as the department lacks basic facilities to help check it.

“Our department is understaffed, we don’t have proper equipment, no infrastructure, nothing for our mobility and, above all, we lack better communication equipment. In short, we don’t possess any means to stop animal poaching , admitted A.K. Shrivastva, chief wildlife warden.

Though his department had taken ‘stringent’ measures to check poaching, these were not sufficient as 88 per cent of the forest area comes under the state Forest Department, which was also facing similar problems.

“In 2002, the Jammu and Kashmir Anti-Poaching Act, 1928, was made more stringent, with the local police given the powers to arrest poachers . We also enlisted some endangered animals under Schedule I and II,” Shrivastva said.

However, the recent arrest of three persons along with two leopard hides has exposed the vulnerability of wildlife in the state.

The animals were killed in the upper reaches of Doda and Ramban districts. “We can’t rule out an international racket behind the killing of beasts in the state,” a senior police officer said.