Rhino Killings: The Inside Story

A former poacher in Kaziranga reveals why the animal is being increasingly hunted

TERESA REHMAN
Kaziranga, Assam

UB Photos

A RARE SUCCESS story in India’s wildlife conservation record, Assam’s Kaziranga National Park, home to the one-horned Asiatic Rhinoceros and a UNESCO World Heritage Site, is struggling to come to grips with a spurt in rhino killings. Twenty rhinos were poached last year, 14 of them inside the national park and the rest in areas just outside the sanctuary. The forest department has come up with the usual excuses of being understaffed and under-equipped, but the retrenchment of casual workers in the park by the previous Prafulla Kumar Mahanta regime, leaving scores without livelihood and angry at the government apathy, has also played its damaging part.

One of those dismissed workers was Golap Patgiri. Employed informally by the forest department since 10 years, Patgiri’s monthly earnings of Rs 1,500 suddenly ran dry. “We used to do everything, from patrolling to cutting grass. We assisted the permanent staff in almost everything. I had once caught a poacher red-handed,” he says. Suddenly jobless, Patgiri found himself under pressure to join the ranks of the very people he had once battled: the poachers.

“All of a sudden we had nothing to do and there was a family to look after. It was difficult to go back to our village and begin farming. As it is our village is ravaged by annual floods and the crops are destroyed by stray rhinos and buffalos,” rues Patgiri. Despite belonging to one of the village’s affluent families, nobody was ready to engage him even as a daily wage labourer. “People used to ask us instead if we had a job for them,” he says.

On the fringes of the 900-sq km sanctuary is a small hamlet known as “Shikari Gaon”. Infamous as a breeding ground of poachers till not long ago, the village is now home to many surrendered poachers, some of whom work as informers for the forest department. Patgiri is one such “reformed” outlaw, and besides helping forest officials with information, he works as an activist for a local NGO named “Dagrob – Eco-tourism and Eco-development Society”. The Wildlife Trust of India has promised to help him set up a shop. Dagrob means the “rising sun” and Patgiri and his fellow villagers are keen to make a new beginning. One of Dagrob’s main activities is creating awareness against poaching. Another is a campaign for economic empowerment of women through building a cottage weaving industry. The NGO North East Social Trust is assisting Dagrob in this endeavour.

Patgiri has one case of poaching still pending against him, and he has to face the wrath of forest department officials whenever a poaching incident takes place. In Dhoba Ati Beloguri, Patgiri’s native village, his elder brother Holiram Patgiri, a former CPI-ML activist, joins us. Pointing to his thatched house, he laughs, “Can you believe it? We are just about 3 km from Bokakhat town, yet we have no electricity or water supply. The only saving grace is a primary school with a single teacher who caters to 115 students.”

How did his village, inhabited by people from the Mishing tribe, come to acquire the infamous epithet Shikari Gaon? Holiram says that the government used to grant gun licences to villagers living close to the forest to protect themselves from wild animals. The villagers were later asked to surrender the guns when militancy broke out in the region.

MANY OF the villagers had single and double barrel rifles. In fact, owning land, elephants, buffalo and a gun were status symbols in our villages,” Holiram says. “Most of our men were ace hunters and hunting a pig or a hare was considered sacred during the festivals. But the rhino was never our target.”

Holiram says many of the poor villagers were lured into assisting the poachers who came from Nagaland, Manipur, Arunachal Pradesh and Mizoram. “These poachers came with sophisticated weapons but could not operate without a guide who knew the ins and outs of the forest,” he says.

There was a time when 15 such local “poachers” had surrendered and the forest department had promised to pay them Rs 500 per month. Explains wildlife activist Uttam Saikia, who is also the honorary wildlife warden of Golaghat district, “But gradually the payment stopped and the officers stopped bothering. There should be proper rehabilitation packages for the reformed poachers like they have for the surrendered militants in Assam.”

An angry Holiram says the forest department’s claim of being short-staffed is a lie. “If they are understaffed, why did they fire those casual workers? Our boys grew up among the wild animals in the forest. They can be much better guards. Most of the present guards are so old they can barely hear or see,” he says.

Wildlife expert Bibabh Talukdar says community participation is imperative for dealing with poaching. “The government should accord the highest priority to strengthening intelligence. The illegal wildlife trade in Kaziranga is the second highest in the country in terms of volume. If for Rs 10,000 the villagers are helping the poachers the government should pay them Rs 20,000 to help nab the poachers,” he says.

Talukdar points out that between 1998 and 2006, rhino poaching in Kaziranga was controlled effectively, with an average loss of only about 4-8 rhinos per year. Better conservation efforts during these years had led to an increase in the rhino population from about 1,550 in 1999 to 1,850 in 2006. But the gains seem to be fast getting eroded given the spate of killings last year.

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