Equip Forest Guards to Protect Wildlife in India

Hello and greetings from Wildlife Trust of India!

We hope you are doing great.

With this email, we are sharing the updates for our project titled 'Equip Forest Guards to Protect Wildlife in India”. We are so honoured and grateful for your support as you chose to donate for the project among so many wonderful causes out there. This means a lot to us. Thank you so much for believing in our work.

Today’s updates are from Sohelwa Wildlife Sanctuary in Uttar Pradesh, where we addressed human-snake conflict through a Rapid Action Project sanctioned in the reporting period.

In the last one month, nearly 30 instances of human-snake conflict were reported from the region. To ensure safety of both humans and the reptiles, forest department approached WTI for help.

As a part of the project, WTI team, led by our reptile handling and rescue expert, conducted a snake rescue training of 20 forest staff officials for better management of conflict situations. The training covered both theoretical and practical aspects of snake handling and rescues. The staff were trained on identification of venomous snakes and snake behaviour, and were briefed about the common hiding places of snakes and myths related to reptiles. There was a practical on safe and ethical handling of snakes.

At night, following Day-1 of training, one of the newly trained staff managed to successfully capture and release a wolf snake near his accommodation.

In addition to the training, snake rescue kits were distributed to each patrolling camp in the sanctuary. Also, anti-snake venom vials were provided to the Forest Department for distribution in nearby hospitals. The hospitals weren’t equipped with anti-venom and last year a constable had lost his life due to the limitation.

With the aid provided, the frontline staff so far managed 25 snake rescues. The intervention has thus proved effective in managing human-snake conflict, thus helping both humans and reptiles of the Sohelwa wildlife sanctuary.

The above could have been made possible due to your support to the project. Thank you so much for making this happen.

Warm regards,

Team WTI