Once they shot elephants, now they hunt poachers

Once they shot elephants, now they hunt poachers
PALLAVA BAGLA

THEKKADI (KERALA), SEPTEMBER 25: Every morning a ragtag army of five unarmed ex-bandits donning camouflage uniforms, accompanied by two armed forest department guards, moves into the world-famous Periyar Tiger Reserve in Thekkadi in Kerala. This motley crowd of 20, all of them local tribals, walk the greens to protect wild elephants from ivory poachers and also help save the forest from sandalwood and cinnamon bark smugglers.

And they have been successful. Says Shivdas, Assistant Field Director at the Periyar Tiger Reserve: ``Poaching cases have dropped by half during the past two years ever since they took to guarding the forests.''

The ex-bandits have been part of the protection force for forests ever since the Kerala Forest Department started implementing the Rs 40-crore World Bank-funded Eco-development Project to conserve the rich bio-diversity in the Periyar Tiger Reserve. Local forest authorities were to ensure ``stake-holder involvement and people's participation'', the key ingredients of the project. Periyar Tiger Reserve is one of the seven sites in India where the Eco-development Project is being implemented.

Two years ago, while interrogating some smugglers arrested on charges of cinnamon bark smuggling, the forest officials hit upon the idea that if they could seek co-operation from these bandits then the forests could be made a safer place. As Shivdas puts it, the idea was to get ``thieves to catch the thieves''.

What made it attractive was the `bandits' were not only familiar with the modus operandi of smugglers and poachers but also knew the undulating terrain like the back of their hands.

With funding assured from the World Bank, the Kerala Forest Department recruited 20 such poachers who wanted to return to life within the bounds of law. This group was convened into an `Eco-development Committee' which was to administer the protection activities that were assigned to this group.

Most members of this group had been on the run from law for a long time and some had even served jail terms extending up to three years for having committed various forest-related offences. But, as a concession, the forest department decided not to press charges on the pending criminal cases against them.

Some of the spectacular successes of this forest protection group include the seizure of seven ivory tusks from the Periyar forests in August 1998, and last year they caught virtually red-handed a notorious poacher with over 300 kg of Gaur meat.

Vinod Kumar Uniyal, Field Director at the Periyar Tiger Reserve, describes the project a ``very successful experiment in social engineering''. The forest department, he says, has been able to create a ``virtual social fence'' of local conservationists besides reducing the alienation that had come about between the locals and forest department.

Karnataka and Tamil Nadu could perhaps learn a few things from this project so that more Veerappans do not lay siege to forests.