John Wilbert & Sarthak Kanjilall
Port Blair, September 03: Despite the Islands being surrounded by the forest, excluding the Forest Department from the essential services during the time of the first lockdown resulted in the free movement of poachers, claimed a senior officer of the Forest Department who does not want his name to be quoted.
As per the officer of the Forest Department, a lot of poachers freely entered inside the forest area during this period and caused harm flora and fauna.
“We found more than 400 traps inside the forest area and there are many more for which the search is on,” said the officer.
As per details, the Wildlife Unit of Forest Department, which got the permission in the second phase of the lockdown for movement and patrolling and it took the unit nearly a month to get the pass approved. This delay gave ample time to poachers to enter forest area and cause serious damage.
The team of Wildlife has also found many schedule one animals dead in traps, placed by the poachers and has also sighted illegal encroachment by villagers in some forest areas.
“Many Wildlife protection teams were kept standby during the pandemic, those were supposed to take care of the wildlife especially the wild animals like Elephants and to maintain the law and order for protecting the animals,” said the Wildlife Officer.
Due to sidelining the Wildlife Department from performing their duties, the illegal activities mostly happened in the forest areas that are close to the villages like Kalapahad, Beach Nallah, and Jarawa area as the people had easy access to forests.
Some sources in the Department also said that poaching activities in the Jarawa area are at its peak and they cannot take a call on inputs immediately just because these areas are controlled by the AAJVS and Police.
The million-dollar question is why the Wildlife Department was not kept under the essential services by the Andaman administration and if the decision was taken by the MHA, why the Andaman administration did not inform them about the crucial duties performed by the Forest and Wildlife Department.
