HYDERABAD: The Kawal Tiger Reserve in Mancherial district is the most unsafe place for wild animals in Telangana, if the number of wildlife poaching cases is any indication.As per the data on crimes against wildlife released by the state forest department, there were 78 cases of crime against wildlife in 2017-18, of which 26 cases were from Kawal. Since January this calendar year, 20 cases have been recorded in the state — eight from Kawal, four from Khammam, three from Kothagudem, two from Hyderabad and one each from Karimnagar and Amrabad.
The crimes in Kawal include poaching of a four-horned antelope, also known as a Chowsingha, which is listed as a ‘vulnerable’ species by the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN). In December 2016, the carcass of a tiger was exhumed by forest officials at Mancherial. Of the 26 crimes recorded in Kawal during 2017-18, almost half of them were from Bellampally division of the tiger reserve, and they included 11 poaching cases.
It may be mentioned here that the tiger reserve lies very close to Adilabad, the Assembly constituency of forest minister Jogu Ramanna. Kawal is also one of the top five protected areas in Telangana that recorded most negative forest cover changes among the 12 protected areas in the state, as per State of Forest Report released in 2015.
Wildlife crime cases in the past three years were 78 cases in 2017-18. In the two preceding years, there were 84 cases in 2015-16 and 79 in 2016-17, and the number of cases was the highest in Kawal Tiger Reserve at 29 and 20 respectively. This spurt in crime rate defeats the purpose of having a tiger reserve which is meant to be one of the safest conservation zones not just for the tiger but also the associated species in a forest.
When contacted, Kawal Tiger Reserve’s field director C Saravanan said, “Almost all the cases of poaching in Kawal are related to meat consumption and it is mostly either wild boar or spotted deer that gets killed. There have been no cases of hunting of wild animals for sport in Kawal. We are taking up various programmes to educate people and dissuade them from hunting wild animals for meat. Yet, there are some offenders who are habituated to hunting for meat. Measures are being taken to control poaching.”
Principal chief conservator of forests PK Jha said, “Kawal Tiger Reserve has had the problem of poaching for long, which is not the case with the Amrabad tiger reserve. There is a lack of respect for forest laws in the areas covered by the Kawal tiger reserve and adjoining it but in the case of Amrabad local people desist from hunting wild animals.”