By Aniruddha Majumder | Officer in Charge
Wildlife crime is one of the major threats to the survival of flagship species like tigers, elephant and leopards. India’s frontline forest staff has been facing adverse field conditions and organised wildlife crime. Criminals often escape due to the staff not having proper knowledge on wildlife law, crime prevention, intelligence collection, crime investigation, reporting and procedures in the court handling wildlife crime.
Wildlife Trust of India (WTI) believes that Wildlife Crime Prevention training under its Guardians of the Wild or Van Rakshak Project (VRP) plays an important role in conservation through training, equipping and educating frontline forest guards which are a major step towards protecting forests and wildlife. With this noble aim, WTI has so far trained 14400 frontline forest staff in India.
Between April and July 2015, WTI team have given refresher training to and equipped a total of 282 frontline forest staff of Pench Tiger Reserve, Madhya Pradesh. This refresher module was for all the staff in Pench that had undergone new training on the Wildlife (Protection) Act 1972 of India and its various sections, antipoaching patrolling techniques, crime scene investigation, intelligence gathering, interrogation techniques, and preparation of Preliminary Offence Report (POR). Their increased knowledge was evaluated through pre and post test on the subject taught and found an average 11% knowledge gain.
Since April we have received 5 claims under supplementary accidental insurance scheme and provided ex gratia support to 4 persons including one death. We maintain a Protected Area Staff Status (PASS) data base and have signed on more than 20000 frontline staff so far to benefit from this insurance scheme including 122 new entries for the state of Assam. We have already designed and finalised posters on the scheme in four regional languages and going to distribute to the Forest Divisions of Assam, Chattishgarh, Bihar, Madhya Pradesh, Maharashtra and Karnataka.
For the next quarter, we have already planned to start 8 fresh and 8 refresher training in 16 territorial circles of Madhya Pradesh Forest Department, which would commence from 6th of August in Bandhavgarh and will subsequently conduct the remaining in Panna, Madhav, Ratapani, Ralamandal, Kanha, Pench and Satpuda forests. In collaboration with Chhattisgarh Forest Department, we are also going to conduct VRP training in Barnawapara and Jagdalpur of Chhattisgarh. VRP training will be also conducted in Valmiki Tiger Reserve. Both Chattishgarh and Bihar trainings will commence in September. In addition to those training programmes, we planned to conduct VRP training programmes in Assam, Maharashtra and Bhutan.
Through Wildlife Crime Prevention training, we have trained and equipped frontline forest staff of over a 120 PAs in India and we hope to continue strengthening wildlife-protection measures through building capacity in and boosting the morale of frontline forest staff.
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