New Delhi: Large caches of hair used for artist brushes, extracted by slaughtering hundreds of thousands of mongooses, were seized in nationwide raids over the weekend.

The forest department and the police conducted the raids in an operation, planned with the Wildlife Trust of India (WTI) over the last six months, yielding over a 1000 kilograms of hair illegally used by some of the best known producers of art brushes in the country. The brushes made with illegal mongoose hair were also being exported.

The raids began on Saturday at Moradabad and Sherkote in Uttar Pradesh and were followed over the next two days in Delhi, Calcutta, Chennai and Mumbai. At Moradabad, one of the main centres of trade, over 700 kgs of raw hair and brushes were seized from two individuals, who were arrested by the police.

“Just imagine all the brushes used by environmentally aware artists and small children in this country were being produced by slaughtering hundreds of thousands of these harmless creatures that are actually the farmer’s friend and keep the snake and rodent population under control,” WTI director, Aniruddha Mookerjee said. Given the scale of the slaughter Mr Mookerjee said that the government should consider upgrading the animal to Schedule I of the Wildlife Protection Act, “otherwise the animal, which is so common now, will fade away in the coming years.” Currently the animal is in Schedule IV and a permit is needed to trade in its derivatives collected before the Wildlife Protection Act, 1972 came into effect. No new permits for stocks can be acquired. Those arrested and raided did not have any permits.

The Common mongoose (Herpestes edwardsi) is found all over the country and is well adapted to every kind of habitat ranging from dry deserts to marshes as well as hills. The coat of this mongoose has a grizzled pepper and salt appearance. This is because each hair is alternatively ringed with black and white. In mongooses from northern India the white rings to the hair are more prominent, while in the south the black becomes more prominent.

Each animal yields about 20 grams of usable hair after the raw material is cleaned and graded for making brushes. The animals are trapped and then bashed to death or stunned. The hair is then plucked by hand, sometimes when the animal is still alive, and packed in gunny bags and sent to production centres.

According to WTI’s investigations the main trapping centres are in Ballia, Bijnore and Gorakhpur districts of Uttar Pradesh and near Vellore in Tamil Nadu. The main production centre for brushes is in Moradabad and even on the outskirts of Delhi. The product is sold all over the country and abroad after being branded by well-known companies.

“The amount of hair seized over this weekend accounts for the life of at least 50,000 animals and we have only touched the tip of the iceberg,” Ashok Kumar, Trustee WTI said, “you can imagine the scale of the slaughter.”