MP tops the list of Tiger poaching cases 

Pashu Sandesh, 24 June 2019

Madhya Pradesh boasts itself as the Tiger State the tag which it recently lost to Karnataka, but the number of poaching cases reported from the State is telling a different truth. In an Answer to a question in the Lok Sabha, Minister of Environment, Forest and Climate change GOI, Prakash Javadekar presented data provided by the National Tiger Conservation Authority (NTCA).

The report provided by the NTCA contains the Poaching and Seizure Data from 2012 to 2018 collected from all over India. MP with 31 poaching cases and 12 seizure cases tops the list which shows a total number of 141 Tiger poaching cases occurred between 2012 to 2018 and 84 seizure case were registered during a similar period. In the report, few states such as West Bengal has reported only one poaching case since 2018 and considering the sizeable Tiger population in the State, the Data seems to be inadequate and under-reported. Karnataka is second in the list with 24 poaching cases which are alarming for a State which has the largest number of Tigers. 

Minister also informed the house that as per the available records of the Wildlife Crime Control Bureau based on the information received from the State Forest and Police Authorities, 9253 people have been arrested in wildlife poaching cases since 2012 to 2018 in India. In response to a question in November 2018, Javadekar confirmed the death of 274 Tiger in the last four years and only 82 deaths were reported as due to natural causes.

The conviction rate in the poaching cases is also very poor. Again as per the Data of Government, itself conviction took place only in 126 cases out of 2269 cases registered since 2015. This low conviction rate encourages poacher to again commit the crime as most of them are out on bail and remain a potent threat to the Wild animals. 

Tigers are poached for their skin and bones which are used in the Chinese traditional medicines as an aphrodisiac.