The new fleet of 14 sniffer dogs will be deputed in seven tiger states - Madhya Pradesh, Assam, Uttarakhand, Maharashtra, Tamil Nadu, Jharkhand and Karnataka. This will raise India's sniffer dogs' fleet to 27.

So far, dog squads are deployed to detect wildlife crimes only in countries like the United States, Canada and South Africa.

The dogs have been trained for sniffing out wildlife products such as tiger and leopard bones and skins, elephant ivory and bear bile. They will also detect other wildlife contraband in the wildlife reserves.

Since 2008, 13 sniffer dogs have led to more than 100 significant wildlife seizure cases.

Shekhar Kumar Niraj, head of TRAFFIC, the wildlife trade monitoring network, which had trained the dogs' fleet, said, "India has a huge area and with only 27 trained sniffer dogs, pressure for protecting India's wildlife is immense on these four-legged creatures. We will deploy four to five dogs in each state over the next few years for boosting wildlife conservation and protection efforts."

The government had also recently introduced e-surveillance and drones in detecting the wildlife crimes in protected areas, especially in tiger reserves like Kaziranga National Park.