Trainees at the workshop in Manas TR

Kokrajhar, December 2, 2015: A three day-long Wildlife Crime Prevention Training for the front line staff of Haltugaon and Chirang forest division in Manas Tiger Reserve was organised by International Fund for Animal Welfare (IFAW) and Wildlife Trust of India (WTI) with support from Bodoland Territorial Council (BTC). Thirty six participants from these divisions undertook the training held from November 28 to 30, 2015, at Sri Rampur in BTC, Assam.

The main objective of the training was to make the trainees aware of the various provisions of Wildlife (Protection) Act, 1972; Assam (Wildlife) Forest Protection Rules 1997; The Arms Act, 1959; The Indian Evidence Act; Indian Penal Code; and Code of Criminal Proceedings pertaining to protection of wildlife in the state. The frontline forest staff was sensitized on the powers vested on them by these acts and how they need to proceed in case they are attending to any wildlife crime investigation.

Participants during the field exercise in Manas TR

Considering the fact that the forest authorities are still following the dated Assam Wildlife Protection Rules, 1891 for booking criminals, the need was to help the Forest Department understand the finer details and importance of Wildlife (Protection) Act, 1972. This will help them build a strong case which can further lead to conviction.

The participants were a mixed lot of field staff which included Deputy Range Forest Officer, Forest Guards and Foresters 1. Bhupen Talukdar, retired DCF, Assam Forest Department, conducted the training while RC Bhattacharjee interacted with the trainees on how to prevent wildlife crimes using smart patrolling techniques, intelligence gathering and coordination with the other government departments like police and paramilitary forces.

The trainees were divided into seven groups and asked to prepare offense reports and submit them to the trainer. During the course of the training, critical analysis and evaluation of the reports was done by the resource persons and the suggestions made by them were shared with the participants.

This training is part of the ongoing wildlife crime prevention training being conducted by IFAW-WTI in the last four years in Greater Manas. Manjil Brahma, a forest guard working with the Protection Squad Range, claimed that such field exercises and evidence documentation for offence report in an appropriate way will go a long way in helping the forest department in dealing with wildlife crimes and criminals.

Earlier, cases pertaining to wildlife crime suffered due to insufficient case documentation and weak offence report. IFAW-WTI has been trying hard to ensure that offense report writing skills improve considerably with such wildlife crime prevention trainings in Manas TR.

According to Dr Bhaskar Choudhury, Regional Head and Head Veterinarian, IFAW-WTI, “Our crime prevention trainings for past four years in Greater Manas have started giving results and we can see considerable improvement in the offense report writing during such field training exercises. This needs to be employed in real field situations for booking offenders and increasing the number of convictions in the court of law.”

IFAW-WTI has regularly been conducting Wildlife Crime Prevention Training for the field staff of Manas Tiger Reserve since 2011-12.