Forest guards with WW II rifles losing fight against poachers with submachine guns

Manimugdha S Sharma

Forest guards in Kaziranga

What are the odds of survival of a forest guard armed with a bolt-action rifle of WWII vintage while facing a poacher armed with an HK MP5 submachine gun? By the time he cocks his rifle and takes aim, his opponent would have shot him 100 times. This probably explains why the rhino and its defenders are unsafe in Assam. In less than two months, eight rhinos have been killed in the state, four of them in a just a week. Last year, the count was 21.

Often pulled up for their ineptitude, the foresters face insurmountable odds. A senior officer in Assam says they have been battling poachers with.315 bore and 12 bore guns and 7.62mm 2A1 bolt-action rifles (erroneously referred to as .303). These weapons are good to scare off wild animals, but are useless against poachers with AK rifles.

In Gujarat's Gir forest, guards have been fighting poachers with 12 bore double barrel shotguns and .32 revolvers. "We have been purchasing only these revolvers lately. But wherever the threat of poaching is high, units are given other guns. We have no semi-automatic or automatic rifles," says Sandeep Kumar, the deputy conservator of forests, Gir.

It is not difficult to imagine why the fight against poaching is increasingly becoming a losing one, especially in the northeast. Poorly armed and led, the forest guards cannot win the battle that became one-sided with the entry of insurgent groups and surrendered militants into the profitable rhino horn trade. With flourishing markets in China, Vietnam and other places in South-East Asia, these groups have met international demands by allegedly procuring sophisticated arms from Chinese firms.

"These weapons are either originals or knockoffs of Russian AK series rifles, American M16s, and German HK MP5s and HK 33s. The superior rate of fire of these weapons gives the user a huge advantage. Poachers have been using Kalashnikovs extensively, and the HKs in a few cases," says a senior Assam Police officer involved in counter-insurgency operations. He adds that foresters need to be trained in jungle warfare and there should be a separate intelligence network for the forests.

Sending poorly armed forest guards to battle such dangerous poachers is very unfair. But Amrit Bhuyan, the commandant of 2nd Assam Forest Protection Force, believes jungle warfare is a different ball game altogether. "My 251 men are inside Kaziranga right now. They have been given police training for the first time. I don't think they need to be taught jungle warfare tactics akin to the Army. But yes, they need to know how to function in a jungle environment; how to distinguish between a poacher and a rhino when it is pitch dark," he says, adding that his battalion does not have any night vision equipment.

In September last year, the two battalions of Assam Forest Protection Force were given the 7.62mm 1A1 SLR—a weapon discarded by both the Indian Army as well as the paramilitary forces in the mid-90s due to reliability issues.

N K Vasu, the director of Kaziranga National Park, sees it differently. "Our needs are different from the Army's. The SLRs, we believe, will help us stay in the fight; but we are also trying for more advanced weapons like the AK-47," he says.

It has been learnt that a proposal to procure AK-47s for forest guards hasn't elicited any reaction from the government in the last 10 months. In such a scenario, it is advantage poachers.

Source: http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/home/environment/flora-fauna/Forest-guards-with-WW-II-rifles-losing-fight-against-poachers-with-submachine-guns/articleshow/18393375.cms

Elephants destroy crops

A herd of five elephants destroyed banana crops and arecanut trees on farms on the Mettuppalayam – Vanabadrakaliamman temple road in the last two days.

The herd had entered the same area about 20 days ago, people said.

Though four of them went back to forest, one got separated. The single elephant had killed an aged woman last month in the same area. After re-uniting, the herd crossed river Bhavani and strayed into various farms in the area. The herd in the last two-days destroyed crops ripe for yield in a few banana farms and even uprooted areca nut trees.

The Forest Department is on the job of deploying anti-depredation watchers to monitoring its movement and drive it deep into the forests, Farmers have demanded that a permanent solution be found to end the menace.

Source: http://www.thehindu.com/todays-paper/tp-national/tp-tamilnadu/elephants-destroy-crops/article4396131.ece

How to handle forest fires

R. Krishna Kumar

These are testing times for the Forest Department which is grappling with an increase in the frequency of
wild animals straying into the human landscape and the breaking out of forest fires.— Photos: M.A. Sriram

The authorities in Nagarhole wildlife sanctuary have burnt vegetation along the safari routes which is the traditional method of containing forest fires from spreading in case of a conflagration.

This is reckoned to be a practical way of containing forest fires as controlled burning of vegetation done in winter ensures that in case of a fire, there is no scope for flames to spread beyond the bald patch of land cleared of vegetation, termed as “fire line”. In Nagarhole alone about 1,700 hectares of vegetation has been cleared and burnt as part of fire-fighting measures. Wildlife activists have pleaded for roping in the local community and to appoint unemployed youth to the posts of fire spotters and watchers and thus gain their confidence. Funding is not an issue to save the forests from fires and there is adequate corpus to be drawn from the State Compensatory Afforestation Fund Management and Planning Authority.

Meanwhile, Wildlife First, an NGO advocating conservation issues, has called for a ban on civic-related work so that the resources, both monetary and human, could be channelised towards fire protection work.

Also on the anvil are slots on radio and television appealing for the local community’s cooperation. For, the key to containing forest fires is to prevent them in the first place.

Though Bandipur and Nagarhole are prone to forest fires, the frequency of their occurrence can spell ruin to this rich habitat that is home to tigers, elephants, leopards, dholes, sambhars, spotted deer and scores of other exotic animals and birds. These two landscapes have also been recognised by the National Tiger Conservation Authority (NTCA) as India’s best tiger and elephant landscape and hence merit all efforts to balance wildlife conservation with the local community’s economic and survival imperatives.

Source: http://www.thehindu.com/todays-paper/tp-features/tp-districtplus/how-to-handle-forest-fires/article4394926.ece