Instances of such thefts have been reported from erstwhile Warangal, Adilabad and Mahabubnagar districts, all worth a few lakhs of rupees.
Hyderabad: Poachers and wood smugglers in the State have apparently found a way to keep themselves out of the picture that may prove their involvement in a forest crime. Literally.
Off and on, the Forest Department has been losing some of its camera ‘traps’ — cameras that are triggered by a motion sensor or an infra-red beam. These are usually tied to trees with nylon straps.
As per official estimates, the Telangana Forest Department has about 1,600 such camera traps of both kinds. However, data on how many were stolen over the years is not available.
In some cases, according to sources in the department, some of these thefts may have been prompted by fears of being caught on camera.
It is not uncommon for the department staff at the field-level to advertise that camera traps have been installed in the forest and warn people that any illegal activity in the forest would be captured in photographs. While the warnings are well meant, they also serve as triggers for wood smugglers and poachers to locate the cameras, steal and destroy them.
Instances of such thefts have been reported from erstwhile Warangal, Adilabad and Mahabubnagar districts, all worth a few lakhs of rupees. “They are of no use to those who steal them as they cannot be used like conventional cameras. The only purpose of such acts is to eliminate any possible evidence of wrongdoings,” a department official told ‘Telangana Today‘.
Another official from the erstwhile Warangal district said the loss of a camera trap brings its own challenge. “Since we have to account for our equipment, we have to file a complaint with the local police who are reluctant to accept our complaints or act on them because they consider these nuisance cases,” the official said.
“So we have been installing the cameras in the evening, the time around which people leave the forests, and returning to the site and removing them the next morning,” the official added.
An essential go-to item these days for wildlife monitoring and research, camera traps do not come cheap. They cost anywhere from Rs 15,000 to Rs 20,000 and even upwards depending on the speed at which the motion sensor triggers the camera, and image quality and other quality related factors.
It is not just the department that has been a victim of such thefts. Wildlife Conservation Society’s Assistant Director of Conservation Science and a wildlife biologist Imran Siddiqui, told ‘Telangana Today’ his group had lost about a dozen such cameras over the years. “In some cases, people just vandalise and destroy the cameras,” he said.
Though there are ways to protect the cameras, by placing them in metal boxes that are chained to trees with locks, such additional equipment is not widely used in the State yet. These boxes need to be purpose-built as the department has different camera traps of different sizes and types and procuring them would also mean finding resources to do so, sources said.
https://telanganatoday.com/poachers-smugglers-steal-camera-traps-in-telangana-forests
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