Guwahati, May 7 : The World Wide Fund for Nature (WWF) has called for deployment of paramilitary forces to rein in rhino poachers who have killed as many as 10 of the highly-endangered species in Assam this year.
Pressing the alarm bell in a stinging report released this week, WWF India said enforcement efforts were no longer “sufficiently deterrent” and profits from illegal trade had become very high.
“It is clear that the poachers are becoming bolder and shooting animals in the vicinity of park camps and villages. This suggests that enforcement efforts are no longer sufficiently deterrent and that the profits from this illegal trade are high enough to risk such an approach,” the WWF said.
Stating that the infrastructure of the forest department must be augmented and additional forest guards recruited on a priority basis, the report said, “Till such time, the ground force should be augmented by additional deployment of special armed police and paramilitary forces in the affected areas”.
The agency expressed concern over the almost “non-existent” intelligence network, blaming it on the inter-state and international nature of the trade.
“It is critical that steps should be taken to strengthen the intelligence network to pre-empt any poaching attempt. For this, the government of Assam should directly seek support of agencies like military intelligence for specific inputs on these events,” the report added.
Urging the Assam government to make conservation of rhinos a national issue, the WWF requested all enforcement agencies to “work in collaboration on the ground to collectively meet this crisis”.
It also urged the Centre to immediately convene an inter-state meeting between the state enforcement agencies of Nagaland, Manipur, Assam and West Bengal and NGOs to collectively devise a response to the inter-state trafficking of rhino horns.
The agency also expressed concern over the protection of the recently translocated rhinos in Manas National Park.
The poachers have killed 10 rhinos at the Kaziranga National Park and Orang National Park this year. Of these, five were killed in the last two weeks.
Dispur has announced a CBI probe into the killings. The rhino population in the state has shrunk to 2,000.
Telegraph India
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