Tamil Nadu: Forest department lacks teeth to fight wildlife crime

Chennai: In the past two weeks, Tamil Nadu foresters have seized brushes made out of mongoose, jackal and porcupine hair from different parts of Tamil Nadu including Chennai and Coimbatore, but authorities are yet to crack the major network involved in wildlife crime. Apart from lacking expertise on wildlife research the state does not have a high-end lab to investigate wildlife crimes and lacks the intelligence to prevent the entry of wildlife parts into capital Chennai, said a highly placed official.

The forest department and the Wildlife Crime Control Bureau (WCCB) in Coimbatore seized around 25,000 painting brushes made using mongoose hair from stationery last week. And on Thursday another major haul of brushes was seized from Chennai Parry’s corner where 8,000 panting brushes of porcupines and mongoose hair were seized, but the kingpin and the network are yet to be cracked, the official said, explaining that the recent breakthrough was due to the hard work of the wildlife crime control bureau and intelligence by whistle blowers. In the entire developments, the state foresters have been showing zero resistance to the movement of illegal wildlife products in TN and there is no prevention of poaching cases in Central and south India,  the officer added.

According to a ranger officer,  mongoose and porcupine are schedule animals under Wildlife Protection Act, but there are no adequate labs in the state to check whether the seized consignment is original or fake. There are pending lab bills sent to Centre for Cellular & Molecular Biology (CCMB) Hyderabad last year and we are unable to send the samples to them. In the case of Wildlife Institute lab at Dehradun, the staff are unable to answer the queries raised by WII scientists, this is the status of the TN forest department. In 2013 late CM Jayalalithaa announced forensic research centre at a cost of '27.13 crore. The construction work is over, but the research laboratory is yet to be put to use as there are no equipment and scientists are not appointed yet. The state forest department has been delaying the appointment of research fellows and scientists at the centre due to vested interests, said a retired TN IFS officer, adding that young officers are not trained enough to tackle wildlife crimes, the official added.