The impunity with which tigers were killed in Vidarbha and their skins traded in and around Nagpur within a few months in 2012-13 has raised many questions about the safety of tigers and the quality of vigilance.
As against this, the forest department has been showcasing “unprecedented” investigations that have led to the arrest of at least 31 notorious poachers and traders from all over the country. It has also been claiming that its tiger tally, as found during the state-level census in 2012, is up from 169 in 2010 to 200. The growing number of poached tigers casts a dark shadow over this figure.
Four of the tigers killed in Melghat were from the area under Divisional Forest Officer (DFO) Iitendra Ramgaonkar, decorated for the investigation with Sanctuary Award last year.
While forest officials initially refuted the unconfirmed reports of over 20 tigers being killed, their own probe has so far confirmed poaching of 16 tigers and two leopards. A sloth bear, too, had got accidentally killed in a trap. The official tally recently went up from 13 to 16 after a forensic report revealed that not one but four tigers were killed at Ghatang in Melghat.
Poachers had killed a tiger each near Dhakna and Akot, also in Melghat. In Nagpur division, poachers killed 10 tigers as trade of 11 skins at Ramtek, Ranana, Bhandarbodi and Sevagram revealed. One of the skins was of the Ghatang tiger.
Sarju, a notorious tiger parts smuggler arrested from Delhi last year, had reportedly said over 20 tigers were killed in the region between 2012-end and May 2013.
“Interestingly, no poaching case has come to the fore from Chandrapur that has over 100 tigers and had been a poaching hotspot for years. It is not possible that no tiger was poached there, which means the casualty figure could be much higher than even Sarju’s figure of 20,” said an expert.
“Poachers seem to have made Nagpur their favourite tiger trade destination on account of its central location and the great connectivity it offers, apart from good availability of tigers. Though our investigators have done massive and praiseworthy work on an unprecedented scale to unearth the poaching activity, we are aware that we need to be more vigilant on account of being most vulnerable,” admits Additional Principal Chief Conservator of Forests (Wildlife) S S Mishra, who is supervising and coordinating the investigations.
Mishra said over 70 poachers could be involved in the cases, many of whom were still absconding.
“If they are all arrested, many new cases could come to fore,” said the expert. He asks: “Things have changed for the better ever since scientific methods of tiger counting and monitoring like camera traps have become available. So, if some tigers went missing from camera traps and direct sighting, like Chaitram from Umred-Karandla, were any alerts sounded, any checks done?”
Many of the tigers were killed in the months after forest officials claimed they had laid their hands on the poachers’ call records, which raises a big question mark over the quality of vigilance. “If this has been the kind of off-take of tigers from Maharashtra, not less than 20 tigers are annually killed by poachers. Some die naturally. Even if we take the total to be 25 per year, the 2010 tally of 169 could be down to at least 119 in 2012. If the tiger tally was 200 in 2012, are we to believe that 80 mew tigers were added in just two years,” asked another expert who did not wish to be named.
According to Principal Secretary Pravin Pardeshi, a salutary effect of the investigations — undoubtedly the first concerted ones in the department’s history — has been that poachers’ gangs are in a disarray after unprecedented number of arrests, and that the rest are on the run.
