Shortage of staff hits anti-poaching squad

Aug 16, 2012 - U. SUDHAKAR REDDY |

Hyderabad

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Wildlife hunting is continuing unabated on the city's outskirts where poachers are using firearms openly.
The Anti Poaching Squad, which has the entire state to cover, and is equipped with only two permanent staff members and three contract assistants, is short-staffed and thus could not retaliate. The hunters, carrying guns, are active near the Osmansagar and Himayatsagar reservoirs apart from the reserve forest fringes.

Anti Poaching Squad forest range officer Tirumala Rao said that wildlife activists had sent photographs of armed hunters trying to shoot down birds. The Himayatsagar streams are the habitats of spot-billed ducks and peafowl where the squad lay in wait for the poachers after receiving information. “We also asked local conservationists and NGOs to set up boards, saying hunting is an offence,” he said. The squad in the city, headed by an FRO, has only one permanent staff member, a Deputy FRO. “We have three others who are private assistants working in the field of conservation,” Mr Rao said.

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