The other day, two tribals were arrested in Betul district on charges of poaching. From their possession the police claim to have seized one tiger skin, two spotted deer skins and one of a barking deer.

When approached for comments, a senior State Forest Department officer said that the poachers are active even inside the Tiger Reserves and their buffer zones. To corroborate this, he cited a recent case of poaching detected in Seoni district where the carcass of a tigress and her cub were found lying in the buffer zone of the Pench National Park.

Drawing attention towards the FWCPC report, he said that this document also identifies districts like Balaghat, Mandla, Umaria, Seoni and Panna as most sensitive as far as the problem of poaching was concerned. The famous Tiger Reserves like Kanha, Bandhavgarh, Panna and Pench are located in and around these districts, he pointed out.

The Wildlife Protection Society of India has also expressed concern and raised the issue of 10 wild dogs found poisoned 4 km from the Mukhi Gate of Kanha Tiger Reserve on March 20. The Park management later disputed the casualty figure saying that "only five wild dogs were found dead near the Tiger Reserve". It is being said that the wild dogs might have died after drinking water from a poisoned water hole or eating the poisoned carcass of a tiger kill that was found one km away from the area where the wild dogs had died. Earlier on March 6, a leopard skin was seized and a Nepali citizen was arrested in this connection in Bhopal.

In mid-December 2004, four tiger claws were found near Bichwa village in the Rukhad range of Seoni district near the Pench Tiger Reserve. Three days later, the carcass of a tigress and her cub was found in the south territorial forest division of Seoni. Forest department sources, who had visited this spot, said

that the tigress and her cub had been skinned and their flesh had been left behind. Around the same time another tiger had died under unnatural circumstances in the Totladoh beat of Pench Tiger Reserve.

According to available information, one tiger skin and two leopard skins were seized near the Kanha Tiger Reserve in December 2004. In February 2005, two tiger skins were recovered from the Bahmani area of Kanha Tiger Reserve. Around the same period, six claws and 4 traps used for poaching were seized from the Seoni-Chhindawara road.

The State FWCPC records show that two tiger skins were seized by the Railway Police at Itarsi near the State capital in September 2004. The police records for the year 2003 reveal many seizures, including the seizure of one tiger skin at Jabalpur in February 2003, another tiger skin at Bhujalpur in Shajapur district on April 12, 2004, one tiger skin, one leaopard skin and 4 sambhar antlers by the Railway Police at Bina on June 13, 2004. The Bahmani Police station of Mandla district had also seized the skin and bones of a tiger in 2004 (the Police records available here do not mention the date of this seizure).

Besides tigers, wild fauna like leopard, cheetal, Sambhar, blue bull, as well as peacock were being killed by poachers and number of cases were being registered against them in different parts of the State each year.

While drawing attention towards the poaching menace, the report of the State FWCPC, which is headed by an Additional Director General of Police level officer and has the State's Chief Wildlife Warden as its co-chairperson, also focuses attention on the problem of illegal logging and mining in forest areas.

A special chapter in this report says that Shivpuri, Gwalior, Guna, Vidisha, Panna and Damoh were extremely sensitive so far as illegal mining was concerned. The report goes on to add that all the northern districts of Madhya Pradesh are sensitive in this regard. It says that almost all teak forests in the State are