-By Sharada Annamaraju

Delhi: Law is a curious, self limiting conundrum. While it attempts to delineate and sustain order, it cannot function in a foolproof manner unless everything under its ambit is spelt out well.

Consider the Ministry of Environment and Forests (MoEF) putting out the Draft Wildlife (Protection) Amendment Bill 2010 in public domain and inviting comments from experts to further strengthen it. Enacted in 1972 and amended several times thereafter, one of the proposed amendments this year is to classify leg-hold traps as weapons. Also called jaw-traps or Khadka, these simple yet deadly devices with a vice like grip are a bane to large carnivores in our sanctuaries.

The insertion of Section 9A in the principal act bans sale, manufacture and use of the article as well as regulates its possession. With a DIY style of assembly, its metal components are slipped inside the sanctuary, perhaps masked as the base of a pot and then once inside, using their impeccable knowledge of animal habits, the poachers set up the trap. The ingenuity employed here is that sans the use of guns, a poacher merely has to go back to the area later and check whether an animal has been caught instead of lying himself in wait. Large traps are powerful enough to break the animal’s leg and designed without claws to prevent perforation of the carnivore’s skin. “If found alive, brutal methods – like driving a spear through the animal’s mouth – are deployed to kill it without damaging its skin,” says Ashok Kumar, Vice-Chairman, Wildlife Trust of India (WTI) and the first director of TRAFFIC-India.

The implication of the amendment is huge. For one, the user is liable to get prosecuted for even carrying dismantled parts of the trap in and around a protected area, let alone being found with the assembled trap.  Once proven that the parts belong to a weapon when assembled, it translates to an ‘intention to hunt’ under law.  However, an appeal now stands to broaden the definition of traps under Section 2, (17 A) to include ‘leg and neck hold traps’ to avoid more legal loopholes. “While the last amendment to the act only describes snaring and trapping, this year’s addition is an attempt to define the equipment,” says Prasenjeet Navgire, Programme Officer, WTI.

The debate here is that while limiting the definition to particular limbs, court cases may not hold ground if any other part of an animal gets caught, say its tail! Sudhir KS, Karnataka based Advocate and Managing Trustee of the lawyers’ collective, Voices for Wildlife opines, “The definition of the trap should be widened to include any apparatus which may cause damage, injury or death to any animal in any manner.”

With the leg trap now undergoing redefinition, here arrives an even simpler piece of metal under the scanner – the snare.  Nothing more than a piece of wire fashioned into a smooth noose in less than three minutes, it is used to poach deer, wild pigs, boars and hares. Ironically, the very solar fences lined up on park boundaries to prevent human-wildlife conflicts are now being used to poach animals. Used primarily for bush meat, snares along with traps are our wildlife’s silent killers.

The gravity of the situation is that once a snare is set up, one can’t predict what animal gets caught. Consider the fact that in Bandipur this year, two tigers were accidentally snared and killed. The same goes for traps.  Sudhir adds, “Under the current law, leg traps exclude the fact that rodents, hefty reptiles like pythons, or any animal may get caught. As for snares, what if an elephant’s trunk gets trapped? The wire gets embedded causing septicemia or even cuts through it, rendering the animal incapable of feeding itself.”

The intensity of killing by snaring remains unknown. Areas such as BR Hills and Nagarahole have villages located within them, which makes it even more difficult to establish how many kills have taken place.  Experiments with even metal detectors for both leg traps and snares proved impractical as they are best only for restricted spaces. Even so, there have been attempts made to use them on paths frequented by animals.

“With instances such as road kills, you can give a number, 91 or 100 etc but not with snares,” says Rajkumar, a Karnataka based conservationist. With vast tracts of wilderness, Rajkumar worries that it can get extremely difficult to patrol for this piece of wire, a veritable needle in a haystack.  They are a surefire way of getting your animal. The metal wire strangles the agitating animal and death occurs by stoppage of blood flow to the brain or suffocation. “Snaring peaks around the first and second bouts of showers before the actual monsoons,” adds Rajkumar. The watering holes are replenished after a long and parched summer, and animals become easy quarry.

Tactics such as narrowing down high pressure areas around PAs based on anthropocentric disturbances and knowledge of preference for meat among certain local tribes and communities helps concentrate on a 3–5 kilometre stretch of parks like Bandipur and Nagarahole. With the support of the local RFO and some volunteers, Rajkumar conducted an anti-snare combing programme. Twenty snares were retrieved over 40 days.

Rajkumar adds that up until last year, snares were recorded mostly for hunting bush meat. But of late, they are being used for poaching large carnivores.  The problem of snares is compounded when one understands the ecological aspects. With prey animals of larger carnivores being killed, the prey base is reduced and the animals are forced to venture into human settlements and end up attacking cattle or domestic livestock. This, in turn increases human-animal conflict.

It remains to be hoped that the amendments to the WPA only further strengthen one of the world’s best conservation acts in place. India’s vast biodiversity is caught in the incredible gamut of wildlife trade. And we can only wait and watch in the thirteenth hour, however riddled the paths its animals walk may already be.