Poll Season Sees Uptick in Wildlife Poaching Attempts

Hyderabad: It’s not just leaders of political parties who are being poached by their rival parties. Even the wildlife in Telangana, if the goings on in the state’s forests are any indication, are being poached by hunters who are having a somewhat free run as a result of some of the forest department staff being deployed for election duties.

In the latest such incident, three would-be poachers were nabbed during a hunt in the Madhira forest range in Khammam district on the night of May 3. The forest officials confiscated a single-barrel country-made rifle nine live cartridges and two spent cartridges from their possession.

This was the third in a series of arrests of poachers in the district since the first week of April. In the first incident, two persons from Hyderabad and one from Andhra Pradesh were caught in the Talleda forest range. That hunt was arranged by a local mediator.

On April 29, two were arrested after they killed a sambar deer in the Madhira forest range, and efforts are on to nab them — with the help of AP police — who bought the meat from the poachers.

According to Siddharth Vikram Singh, district forest officer for Khammam, two of the three arrested on May 3 night were from AP and the third was a local person who facilitated the attempted hunt.

“They had taken two shots at some deer near a water hole but missed. Some of our staff who noticed torchlight beams along an incline in the forest went to investigate. Taking great risk in the face of two armed people, forest beat officer Nageshwar Rao and forest section officer U. Suresh, overpowered and arrested them,” Vikram Singh said.

The arrested were identified as Anumolu Srinivasa Rao, Poola Krishna Rao from NTR district of AP, and Parisee Mareswara Rao from G. Goparam village in Khammam district.

According to some department officials, such increased poaching activity usually occurs during large festivals when forest staff is also deployed for bandobast duties but this was the first time that this was being noticed during elections.

While in some districts, the deployment of forest staff for poll duties is around 10 per cent of the staff, in some cases, it is up to 60 to 70 per cent, forest officials said.

Poaching is easier in summers as most water sources dry up and animals begin congregating near the few sources that still can provide water for drinking. And we are stepping up our vigil at all water bodies in the forest, the official added.