Trivandrum, Kerala : Poaching and trade of wildlife especially that commands high-price has always been a major challenge faced by conservation and enforcement agencies across the world. The network of wildlife crime is well organised and that makes it difficult to deal without proper intelligence gathering, operation planning, and prosecution of suspects in a systematic and effective manner.

Kerala has witnessed massive scale poaching of elephants in the year 2015 and the investigation resulted in the unearthing of interstate traffickers operating within the state. This triggered a need to develop a comprehensive solution to the problem.

Senior Kerala Forest officials took lead in investigating activities, analysis of  the situationthat lead to massive poaching. They revealed the need for an effective and real-time intelligence gathering system for they believe that such a  system will ensure poaching incidents are thwarted with advance knowledge to the forest department and stopped from repeating. The decision was to adopt a preventive intelligence gathering and information management system which would be pivotal at stopping all kinds of wildlife crime within the state.

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Periyar Tiger Conservation Foundation took the lead  and under consultation with the then Chief Wildlife Warden, initiated the process of implementing an information management system with help from experts, experienced in working with state departments and new and emerging technology and methods. Given expertise in such information management practice, past experience and assistance provided by Wildlife Trust of India (WTI during the ivory case in 2015 it was natural for us to step in when invited to  collaborate. WTI team based on its vast experience in monitoring enforcement activities and successful applications built in the past conceptualised HAWK (Hostile Activity Watch Kernel), and presented it to the Chief Wildlife Warden and senior officials of the state during a meeting in November 2017.

Implementation of HAWK was included and approved in the Governing Body of Periyar Tiger Conservation Foundation during the year 2017. Later considering the critical need of the project, Kerala Forest Department decided to launch the system throughout the state and the system was inaugurated by honorary Head of Forest Force (HoFF). HAWK is unique and the first of its kind service in India to be implemented for wildlife crime control. It is a real-time technology-based solution to monitor criminal networks, criminal activities and associated incidents to provide actionable intelligence to the enforcement officials to undertake preventive measures against a possible crime.

HAWK works on military intelligence gathering principals which are used across the world to prevent serious organized crime such as terrorist attacks. This methodology is currently successfully used in African countries to manage the threat of elephant poaching and ivory trade networks across many countries. The project which is named as “TenBoma” was developed by a team of Special Ops Force members of the US military in association with International Fund for Animal Welfare (IFAW) whose Partners WTI in India.

The success of this application is that the Kenya Wildlife Service (KWS) is extensively using this since the last three years to deal with criminal networks successfully. The proposed concept is to initiate a TenBoma like project in Kerala as HAWK. Offence data entry module followed by law enforcers is a part of Project HAWK, through which various case documents like Form I, Form II, Case Dairy, Arrest Memo, Inspection Memo etc., can be generated. The module is intended to develop a complete crime and criminal data base for forest offences, to unify the format of documents to be submitted before Courts. It also one stop application to monitor a crime and follow till its successful prosecution. This module is ready for production.

For this, personnel from law enforcement teams have been  identified from  each district of Kerala and are being fostered into their roles as master trainers. With every master trainer ready they are made responsible for imparting training.

HAWK has the potential to revolutionise and curb the challenge of rampant poaching across India and could prove to be a giant leap in the history of wildlife conservation and dismantling wildlife product trade.