Fourteen elephants have died at the hands of poachers at the Simlipal National Park tiger reserve in Orissa’s Mayurbhanj district. A fact-finding team which visited the reserve blame the field staff at the reserve for burning the elephant carcasses to destroy evidence.
The fact-finding team of wildlife experts comprised Belinda Wright and Biswajit Mohanty, who concluded that many of the poachers were traditional hunters who had used poisoned arrows to kill the elephants. They had also poisoned the salt lakes, resulting in the deaths of several other species, including cheetals and wild boar. What the team said was particularly shocking was that the field staff burnt and buried the bones of the elephants, in connivance with local poachers, deep in the reserve.
Since this is one of the premier tiger reserves in Orissa, the National Tiger Conservation Authority had asked Ms Wright and Mr Mohanty to investigate how so many elephants had died in a matter or weeks. Ms Wright confirmed, “Carcasses had indeed been burnt. It is very alarming to find that poachers seemed to enjoy a free hand in this reserve. I don’t know whether any tiger has been killed. We have no evidence of that.”
“What is even more frightening is that this has happened in a tiger reserve with many of the poachers being traced back to Arunachal Pradesh,” she added. They also found that nearly half of the 281 staff positions in the park were vacant. Ms Wright refused to hold Maoists responsible for the poaching. “They were active in 2009 and had destroyed several buildings within the reserve, but these killings do not bear their imprint,” she said.