Visakhapatnam: The tentacles of illegal wildlife trade have now spread across cyberspace in India. It is known that one of the most significant threats to wildlife is illegal trading of wild animals and their parts. There seems to be a need for the forest departments to monitor social media and a few e-commerce websites.
With poachers and traders using cyberspace for the illegal trading of wild animals, this will be the right time for both AP and Telangana forest departments to come up with cyber monitoring teams.
Moving in this direction will help the states to be prepared to fight online trading of wild animals, say wildlife experts. They pointed out that some of the states in North India were already facing these issues and there were a couple of incidents in the two Telugu states too.
It may be recalled that the forest officials of Medchal district and Anti-poaching squad of Hyderabad seized two snakes, which included a python and a bronze back snake, after the youth who smuggled them had uploaded the photos on Facebook to attract buyers.
This incident took place in January and animal lovers who found the advertisement on Facebook had complained to the forest department.
Similarly, there is a similar incident in Telangana and two more incidents in AP. Experts also say such cases are rising in a few other states too.
According to Traffic India, commonly traded protected wildlife species on virtual space in India include red sand boa, pangolin, turtles and tortoises, tokay geckos, parakeets and owls, corals and shells among others.
