MUNNAR: Aiming to protect snakes and wild animals and to assist people troubled by their presence, 37 licensed snake catchers in the district have joined hands to form a new organisation — Kannur Wildlife Rescuers. Wildlife conservationist Vijay Neelakantan is leading the initiative to ensure that incidents like the death of a tourist at Meppadi in an elephant attack are avoided in the future. On Wednesday, the snake catchers possessing forest department licenses met at Taliparamba.
“This is a first-of-its-kind initiative in the state. The members of this collective will be trained further to deal with hostile situations arising from the presence of snakes or other wild animals,” Vijay said.
He said only 37 persons in the district have the license from the forest department to catch snakes.
“Hereon, only those people who have a license will be able to catch snakes or engage in any sort of activity dealing with wild animals. If someone without a license is found engaging in rescue activities, it would be treated as illegal activity. A WhatsApp group has also been formed to make communication easier and effective between members,” he said.
Kannur Wildlife Rescuers is also planning to conduct awareness classes at regular intervals so that the general public and their members would become more enlightened about the conservation of snakes and wild animals. Five core committee members and five executive committee members were elected in the meeting held at the Neelakanta Iyer Memorial Hall.
Apart from Vijay, Riyas Mangadu, Bijilesh Kodiyeri, Ranjith Narayanan and Manoj Kamanatt are the core committee members. Raginesh Munderi, Sandeep Chakkarakkallu, Shamseer Kuthuparamba, Pavithran Payyannur and Nidheesh Chalode are the executive committee members. “Apart from the protection of wild animals, we also aim to spread our activities into the field of environment conservation,” Vijay said.