Vellore district forest officials on Thursday arrested two poachers and seized three jackal heads along with six black-naped hares. Tipped off that the nine animals had been killed and were being sold to the public, district forest officer S Kalanidhi said, officials posing as prospective buyers asked the sellers to bring the jackals and hares to the new bus stand where they nabbed them. The poachers, Subramani, 40, and Venkatesan, 53, were booked under provisions of the Wildlife Protection Act and Tamil Nadu Forest Protection Act.
Despite jackals being protected under Schedule II of the Wildlife Protection Act, 1972, the growing demand for their meat and the belief that some of their body parts like skin, tail and teeth can bring luck have increasingly made them the target of poachers, said Environment Monitoring and Action Initiating founder T Murugavel. Poaching of jackals attracts a jail term of three to seven years and a penalty of Rs 10,000, said Kalanidhi.
But those hunting these scavengers down do not seem to care. In Tiruvannamalai, World Tiruvannamalai, World Wide Fund for Nature - India (WWF-I) field op eratives reported seeing jackal heads openly be ing sold for as much as ` 200 during the 'Girivalam' festival 10 days ago. Tiruttani, Dindigul, Oddanchathram, Uthiramerur, Villupuram, Palani, Srirangam and Kanyakumari are some of the other places where jackal heads, tails and nails are sold, especially during temple festivals and other such occasions, they said.Many also believe that some body parts of a jackal have medicinal value, say researchers.
In Chennai and its surroundings, the wooded areas around the Chembarambakkam lake, the Nanmangalam forests near Tambaram, the Theosophical Society in Adyar and the Guindy National Park were some of the areas that had a thriving jackal population. But rapid urbanization soon drove the jackals out to densely populated localities where they began to fall prey to poachers, say conservationists.
The 'narikuravas', who take their name from these animals and who are normally associated with the poaching of various endangered species, are among those linked to hunting down jackals. These tribals, who refuse to reduce the price for poached birds, are, surprisingly, willing to bring down the price in the case of jackals, say researchers. Shekar Kumar Niraj, who is head of TRAFFIC (wildlife crime control wing of WWF-I), said that the growing instances of jackal poaching were a concern for authorities not only in Tamil Nadu but also in Karnataka, Madhya Pradesh, Chhattisgarh, Uttarakhand and Maharashtra. In these states too, he said, the demand for jackal meat and body parts was the main reason they were being killed.
