Shekhar Kumar Niraj, Head of TRAFFIC (India) – an international wildlife trade monitoring network – observed that there was a huge gap in terms of available resources and requirement in the Forest Department that was badly hitting wildlife protection across the country.
He told The Hindu that the shortage was primarily due to the lesser importance that this department attracted from the Governments compared to other uniformed services such as the police and the paramilitary forces.
He was here to organise the workshop on ‘Strengthening Wildlife Law Enforcement and Conservation in India’.
Mismatch
“There is a mismatch in the availability of resources and the requirement,” he said.
He said that the estimated shortage of manpower and funds was in the range of 50 to 60 per cent.
With poaching on the rise, he said that more funds should be allotted to the Forest Department to recruit more personnel, equipping them with the state-of-the-art gadgets and better training with a scientific perspective.
Unlike other uniformed services where recruitments took place at regular intervals, in many States there was no recruitment in the Forest Department for years, the senior IFS officer claimed. “More young blood should be brought into the department. We cannot expect aged personnel to stay awake and maintain vigil besides running behind poachers,” he added.
Mr. Niraj said that a forest watcher or a guard had to monitor several square kilometres. The personnel, who were very poorly equipped, faced the threat of getting killed by poachers. “The fund allocation for modernisation is grossly inadequate,” he said.
Mr. Niraj pointed out that there were only two forensic laboratories in India - the Centre for Cellular and Molecular Biology in Hyderabad and the Wildlife Institute of India in Dehradun – that had facilities for conducting wildlife forensics trials.
He said that this had resulted in delay in conducting forensic trials and disposal of wildlife offences.
“More such forensic laboratories exclusively for wildlife should be established in the regional level – for a cluster of States,” he said.
While there was a loud call for protecting the environment, the wildlife expert said that this would not be possible till the Governments gave more importance to the Forest Department.
He said that the Governments should fix five-year goals and allot funds to achieve them.
