How about strictly enforcing the ban on
traps and use of trap guns with increased vigor, distinguishing it from other
form of hunting?
Poaching is an organized crime, and like
felling of trees, sand mining, distilling moonshine, they continue unabated as
they receive patronage from the very top, and the connivance of the security
forces by way of corruption to look the other way.
If you speak to staff of the Department
of Wildlife Conservation, whose task it is to catch poachers, their biggest
fear when out patrolling is being injured or killed by traps and trap guns that
are very carefully camouflaged. Most often no one is apprehended for trap guns
and traps as the deed is done remotely, without the culprit present, except
when setting it. Trap guns also kill many innocent civilians who happen to go
into the forest to pick medicinal plants or berries for personal use, the
occasional poacher falls prey to his own trap. If my suggestion below is acted
upon, the DWC staffers will be more productive in their tasks too. A win win
proposition.
It is time to distinguish this
particularly nasty method of maiming and killing, including Hakka Pattas where
food items are wrapped in poison or fuses that blow up upon touch.
Man has hunted for a livelihood since the
beginning of the human race, however they have been banned from hunting in Sri
Lanka only in the last 50 years. However due to this urge for continuation,
there are poachers everywhere and every day in the Island now.
If poachers know that society does not
or will never tolerate this particularly nasty form of killing and maiming
where even small elephants fall prey to this vicious form of cruelty, we may as
a society be able to reduce the incidence of this form of horrific killing. It
is state sponsorship of publicity, of show trials covering all media when
people are apprehended, and earnestly informing the police that they too will
be harshly punished, if there are traps found in their jurisdiction, that will
show results by seeing a reduction.
My contention is that every rural police
station knows who poach. So it is actually easy for them to give out the
message that as they too will be implicated in such instances, poachers are
more likely to listen and desist. With new technology, this form of killing
becomes easy and nastier and more horrific. Why have we not been able to get a
handle on it?
Traps are indiscriminate forms of
killing as they don't select which man or beast is caught in the trap. It is
the worst form of killing. In nations that permit hunting, they are able to
prevent such practices, as they are able to provide the hunter with an outlet
for their desire that is hard wired in their DNA in a more humane way! My
contention then is that the laws in Sri Lanka have not prevented the worst form
of animal cruelty, by banning all killing, and in fact created a bigger
platform for traps and trap guns.
There are professional trappers in many
countries, who are competent in only catching the vermin they are permitted to
kill, and so don't engage in the practices that poachers use in Sri Lanka. The
Media and Police must act publicize this form of killing as being totally
unacceptable and the Government do its part by increasing the sentences and
fines for their use.
I can only hope that common sense
prevails and we are able to civilize our poachers from being indiscriminate
killers to more selective type. Of course my desire is to see a species
management program, so that their energies are directed in the right direction
and we are then able to save animals that are endangered at the same time.
After all the suggestion above is not to encourage hunting, but to re direct
their skills in the right direction eventually, when Sri Lanka matures to a
true era of sustainable practices of farming and wildlife management.
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