Staff crunch makes toothless tigers of anti-poaching drives

Deccan Herald , Saturday, March 18, 2006
Correspondent : Shankar Bennur
Ever wondered why anti-poaching drives in Bandipur and Nagarhole National Parks are not usually as effective as they ought to be?

Ever wondered why anti-poaching drives in Bandipur and Nagarhole National Parks are not usually as effective as they ought to be? The reasons are simple. The patrolling areas (beats) are massive and presently, one guard or watcher ‘looks after’ 10 to 12 sq km (over 500 hectares) in the parks.

According to sources in the parks, intensive patrolling is possible only if the beats are reorganised as under the present system, it is impossible for watchers and guards to focus on the entire area. The reorganisation of the beats can make anti-poaching drives effective, they feel. Proposals have been made in the past to the government to re-organise the patrolling in the State’s wildlife divisions but nothing has been done till now. Nagarahole Park authorities had also sought reorganisation of 63 beats in the past. The situation is so bad in other wildlife divisions (non-park areas) that a 30 sq km area is looked after by one guard!

The Bandipur National Park has sent a fresh proposal to the government to reorganise its beats in the 8,072 sq km park. The park has at present 102 beats, each having an area of 10-12 sq km. Each beat is manned by a guard, sorely insufficient for a big area that constantly faces poaching threats.

Official sources told Deccan Herald that the BNP has urged the government to reduce the beat size from 10-12 sq km to 5 sq km. “Smaller beats can help the guards to do intensive patrolling,” they add. But the reorganisation of beats can be done only after filling up the long-pending vacancies in the parks. “The parks have taken the support of daily wagers for their activities. Those who are posted usually do not stay for long and use ‘influence’ for a transfer to social forestry,” they say.

Crippled

The BNP alone needs 100 watchers and guards to focus on intensive patrolling. “The park’s legs are crippled in the absence of necessary forest guards. We have heads (RFOs, ACFs and others) but no field staff, who are our legs,” a senior forest official said.

Interestingly, there are no vacancies in social forestry division. Only the wildlife divisions are suffering.

“The vehicles in BNP are so old that sometimes they breakdown forcing the staff to trek the forests during emergencies. Hence good vehicles and incentives to guards will go a long way in safeguarding forest wealth and wildlife,” the official notes.

Centralised selection

Now that the government is planning to recruit field staff for wildlife divisions, it should enforce working in wildlife divisions compulsory for the first five years of the appointment. “Otherwise, the new recruits will again use influence and get transfers, thus crippling the wildlife division again,” the official feels.

The district-level selection of forest guards and watchers is the need of the hour, instead of centralised selection where only candidates from Cities who hesitate to work in forests are selected, sources said.

 
SOURCE : Deccan Herald, Saturday, March 18, 2006
 


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