BANGALORE: In a swift and efficient operation forest department staff of Bandipur Tiger Reserve have detected and removed 45 wire snares in the Begur and Gundre ranges of the tiger reserve. These snares, mostly made of telephone wires, steel cables and even natural tree fibres, had been set to catch ungulates such as chital, sambar, wild pig, barking deer, mouse deer and other animals for meat.
However, several instances of tigers and leopards getting killed in these snares are reported.In April this year, a tiger was found dead, caught in a similar snare in Gopalaswamybetta of Bandipur Tiger Reserve. 'It was found that notorious poacher Paapa and his associates Nagarajaswamy, Govinda, Shivaraju and Kumaraswamy were involved in setting the snare.The same gang had poached another tiger in Bandipur during February 2010 in a similar manner. In the last 18 months, five leopards have been reported killed, caught in snares in Karnataka (in Chikmagalur, Shirva, Mangalore and Virajpet).Since then, the forest department had increased foot patrolling to detect and remove snares.In the last three days of the intense combing operation led by field director BJ Hosmat and deputy conservator of forests KT Hanumanthappa, the forest department staff removed the snares which were laid on regular trails where wild animals are known to frequent.Assistant conservators of forests, Lingaraju and Ravishankar, range forest officers Chikka Rajendra and Bhagyavanth Masudi, forester Siddaramappa, guards Ravikumar, Lokesh, Puttaswamy and forest watchers Basavaraju, Krishna, Naaga Naika, Manjunath, Kumara, Maadu, Raju, Darshan and Rajeev were instrumental in this important fete.Snares have become a serious problem in our forests. These silent killers are very difficult to detect and unlike hunters with guns, these are extremely difficult to spot. This incident brings out the importance of foot patrolling in forests, which is the most crucial thing to detect snares and other illegal activities which are impossible to detect in vehicular patrolling.These kinds of unnatural losses of adult big cats will have a serious impact on the carnivore community in the area. For example, if a dominant male tiger is killed, other males which like to take over the territory held by the killed tiger, will kill all the cubs and young male tigers in its territory, so that they it can take over the territory.They will also kill cubs in anticipation that the female tigers can again come in oestrus for it to mate. Hence, the indirect losses of tigers or leopards dying in snares are colossal.It has been a cause for concern that the culture of foot patrolling is vanishing and the current detection by forest department in Bandipur is highly welcomed. The state government has already appointed staff for the Special Tiger Protection Force (STPF) and this is one of the successes of STPF. Karnataka was the first state in the country to set up STPFs.
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