Last fortnight, 14 trainees participated in a passing-out parade at the headquarters of the 23rd Battalion of Madhya Pradesh Special Armed Force in Bhopal. Understandably, their programme had skipped over the arms training exercises that most recruits are put through. Instead, they were taught to use their noses. The 14 German Shepherds have joined 13 other dogs that are already deployed across India in the effort to halt trafficking in illegal wildlife products.
Over the course of their nine-month programme, the dogs were taught to sniff out tiger and leopard parts and skins, bear bile, rhino horn and other wildlife parts, no matter how well concealed. The 14 new wildlife crime busters will not only patrol wildlife areas that are especially vulnerable to poaching but also scan baggage, vehicles, and cargo at airports, railway stations, and bus stands – places that are transit points for the deadly trade.
They will be pressed into action as far afield as Siliguri in West Bengal, Jabalpur in Madhya Pradesh, Madurai in Tamil Nadu and Guwahati in Assam.
While sniffer dogs have long been used to detect narcotics and explosives, India has been using canines in the battle against the $19 billion-a-year wildlife smuggling trade only since 2008. That’s when TRAFFIC-India, a wildlife trade monitoring network of Worldwide Fund for Nature and International Union for the Conservation of Nature, started its programme to train dogs to help stop poaching and to detect wildlife products.
There’s a good reason to use dogs in this endeavour. TRAFFIC estimates that a dog and its handler can thoroughly scan 75% of the passengers and their baggage arriving off a Boeing 747 in 20-30 minutes. It would take 36 humans to do the same job in the same amount of time, and they would be able to offer no more than a cursory examination.
Since the beginning of the programme seven years ago, the 13 dogs already in the field have detected 100 cases that led to successful prosecution and convictions, said Shekhar Niraj, the head of TRAFFIC-India.
Among the stars is Jimmy, a top crime-busting female dog, who has sniffed out star tortoises, pelts and bones of tigers and leopards, venison, and birds. For her outstanding record of cracking 25 wildlife crime cases, she was awarded a certificate of merit by the Madhya Pradesh govenor in 2013.
In 2010, Raja unearthed the carcass of a leopard stuffed in a plastic bag and thrown into a pond in Maharashtra’s Bhrampuri wildlife division, leading to the arrests of seven villagers. The same year, Jackie led sleuths to two poachers in possession of animal traps and six grey francolins. In 2012, Tracey helped forest officials find the missing tusks of a dead elephant in Dalma Wildlife Sanctuary, Jharkhand. She died earlier this year.
Wide benefits
The benefits of this programme cannot be judged by the number of confiscations alone. Dogs can check rapidly and thoroughly, reduce the costs of enforcement by inspecting more cargo and passengers, raise public awareness and public relations, and act as a deterrent to criminals.
Nitin Desai, director-Central India, Wildlife Protection Society of India, an NGO working on wildlife law enforcement, said the programme was proving to be quite effective. “It’s a good achievement,” he said. He pointed to a tiger poaching case in Maharashtra’s Chandrapur district last year, when a dog discovered where the poachers had buried the skin and bones.
But the programme needed to be ramped up, he said. “In central India, there are only three to four dogs at the moment,” Desai said. Sometimes, the dog has to be transported 200 km and it gets tired.
Stretched thin
For now, the 27 dogs in the squad are stretched too thin to combat the increasing numbers of poaching cases. “We aim to equip major wildlife states which have special vulnerabilities, due to threats of poaching and illegal trade, with at least five-six dog squads each,” Niraj said. This, he pointed out, would require huge investments, in addition to state supporting and collaborating with TRAFFIC and the WWF.
It costs TRAFFIC Rs 3.25 lakh to get each dog battle-ready. That includes buying the pups from a breeder in Secunderabad; transporting them to the Police Dog Training Centre of the 23rd Battalion in Bhopal and the National Dog-Training Centre of the Indo-Tibetan Border Police in Panchkula, Haryana; and paying for its training, veterinary bills, and upkeep.
It isn’t not only dogs that need training – their handlers do too. State forest departments send their employees to be trained as handlers and pay their salaries.
When dogs scent something of interest and abruptly change their search pattern, their handlers have to recognise this behaviour. Once the animals locate the article, they may whine, paw, point, or simply sit next to it. But if a dog hasn’t been trained to track a specific object, for example, a reptile, it may show interest, but it may not alert its handler. The human has to interpret dog behaviour and decide whether that bag needs manual searching.
Once training is completed, the state governments that adopt the dogs need to ensure the animals are healthy and happy. Handlers must not be overburdened with other work as they need time to spend time with their charges. Niraj says. Since some states don’t do a very good job of looking after their dogs, TRAFFIC is in the process of drafting a standard operating procedure for canine care.
During the next programme, the older dogs will be recalled for a two to three-week refresher course, so their skills remain sharp.
Over the course of their nine-month programme, the dogs were taught to sniff out tiger and leopard parts and skins, bear bile, rhino horn and other wildlife parts, no matter how well concealed. The 14 new wildlife crime busters will not only patrol wildlife areas that are especially vulnerable to poaching but also scan baggage, vehicles, and cargo at airports, railway stations, and bus stands – places that are transit points for the deadly trade.
They will be pressed into action as far afield as Siliguri in West Bengal, Jabalpur in Madhya Pradesh, Madurai in Tamil Nadu and Guwahati in Assam.
While sniffer dogs have long been used to detect narcotics and explosives, India has been using canines in the battle against the $19 billion-a-year wildlife smuggling trade only since 2008. That’s when TRAFFIC-India, a wildlife trade monitoring network of Worldwide Fund for Nature and International Union for the Conservation of Nature, started its programme to train dogs to help stop poaching and to detect wildlife products.
There’s a good reason to use dogs in this endeavour. TRAFFIC estimates that a dog and its handler can thoroughly scan 75% of the passengers and their baggage arriving off a Boeing 747 in 20-30 minutes. It would take 36 humans to do the same job in the same amount of time, and they would be able to offer no more than a cursory examination.
Since the beginning of the programme seven years ago, the 13 dogs already in the field have detected 100 cases that led to successful prosecution and convictions, said Shekhar Niraj, the head of TRAFFIC-India.
Among the stars is Jimmy, a top crime-busting female dog, who has sniffed out star tortoises, pelts and bones of tigers and leopards, venison, and birds. For her outstanding record of cracking 25 wildlife crime cases, she was awarded a certificate of merit by the Madhya Pradesh govenor in 2013.
In 2010, Raja unearthed the carcass of a leopard stuffed in a plastic bag and thrown into a pond in Maharashtra’s Bhrampuri wildlife division, leading to the arrests of seven villagers. The same year, Jackie led sleuths to two poachers in possession of animal traps and six grey francolins. In 2012, Tracey helped forest officials find the missing tusks of a dead elephant in Dalma Wildlife Sanctuary, Jharkhand. She died earlier this year.
Wide benefits
The benefits of this programme cannot be judged by the number of confiscations alone. Dogs can check rapidly and thoroughly, reduce the costs of enforcement by inspecting more cargo and passengers, raise public awareness and public relations, and act as a deterrent to criminals.
Nitin Desai, director-Central India, Wildlife Protection Society of India, an NGO working on wildlife law enforcement, said the programme was proving to be quite effective. “It’s a good achievement,” he said. He pointed to a tiger poaching case in Maharashtra’s Chandrapur district last year, when a dog discovered where the poachers had buried the skin and bones.
But the programme needed to be ramped up, he said. “In central India, there are only three to four dogs at the moment,” Desai said. Sometimes, the dog has to be transported 200 km and it gets tired.
Stretched thin
For now, the 27 dogs in the squad are stretched too thin to combat the increasing numbers of poaching cases. “We aim to equip major wildlife states which have special vulnerabilities, due to threats of poaching and illegal trade, with at least five-six dog squads each,” Niraj said. This, he pointed out, would require huge investments, in addition to state supporting and collaborating with TRAFFIC and the WWF.
It costs TRAFFIC Rs 3.25 lakh to get each dog battle-ready. That includes buying the pups from a breeder in Secunderabad; transporting them to the Police Dog Training Centre of the 23rd Battalion in Bhopal and the National Dog-Training Centre of the Indo-Tibetan Border Police in Panchkula, Haryana; and paying for its training, veterinary bills, and upkeep.
It isn’t not only dogs that need training – their handlers do too. State forest departments send their employees to be trained as handlers and pay their salaries.
When dogs scent something of interest and abruptly change their search pattern, their handlers have to recognise this behaviour. Once the animals locate the article, they may whine, paw, point, or simply sit next to it. But if a dog hasn’t been trained to track a specific object, for example, a reptile, it may show interest, but it may not alert its handler. The human has to interpret dog behaviour and decide whether that bag needs manual searching.
Once training is completed, the state governments that adopt the dogs need to ensure the animals are healthy and happy. Handlers must not be overburdened with other work as they need time to spend time with their charges. Niraj says. Since some states don’t do a very good job of looking after their dogs, TRAFFIC is in the process of drafting a standard operating procedure for canine care.
During the next programme, the older dogs will be recalled for a two to three-week refresher course, so their skills remain sharp.
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