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By Justin Rowlatt South Asia correspondent
Image copyright Getty Images
The authorities at a national park in India protect the wildlife by shooting suspected poachers dead. But has the war against poaching gone too far?
Kaziranga National Park is an incredible story of conservation success.
There were just a handful of Indian one-horned rhinoceros left when the park was set up a century ago in Assam, in India's far east. Now there are more than 2,400 - two-thirds of the entire world population.
This is where David Attenborough's team came to film for Planet Earth II. William and Catherine, the Duke and Duchess of Cambridge, came here last year.
But the way the park protects the animals is controversial. Its rangers have been given the kind of powers to shoot and kill normally only conferred on armed forces policing civil unrest.
Media captionEntire villages are being destroyed to make way for extended national parks
At one stage the park rangers were killing an average of two people every month - more than 20 people a year. Indeed, in 2015 more people were shot dead by park guards than rhinos were killed by poachers.
Innocent villagers, mostly tribal people, have been caught up in the conflict.
Rhinos need protection. Rhino horn can fetch very high prices in Vietnam and China where it is sold as a miracle cure for everything from cancer to erectile dysfunction. Street vendors charge as much as $6,000 for 100g - making it considerably more expensive than gold.
Indian rhinos have smaller horns than those of African rhinos, but reportedly they are marketed as being far more potent.
But how far should we go to protect these endangered animals?
I ask two guards what they were told to do if they encountered poachers in the park.
"The instruction is whenever you see the poachers or hunters, we should start our guns and hunt them," Avdesh explains without hesitation.
"You shoot them?" I ask.
"Yah, yah. Fully ordered to shoot them. Whenever you see the poachers or any people during night-time we are ordered to shoot them."
The government has granted the guards at Kaziranga extraordinary powers that give them considerable protection against prosecution if they shoot and kill people in the park.
Critics say guards like Avdesh and Jibeshwar are effectively being told to carry out "extrajudicial executions".
Getting figures for how many people are killed in the park is surprisingly difficult.
"We don't keep each and every account," says a senior official in India's Forest Department, which oversees the country's national parks.
Image caption Guards like Avdesh and Jibeshwar have considerable powers
The director of the park, Dr Satyendra Singh, is based at the park's impressive colonial-era headquarters.
He talks about the difficulties of tackling poachers in the park, explaining that the poaching gangs recruit local people to help them get into the park but that the actual "shooters" - the men who kill the rhinos - tend to come from neighbouring states.
He says the term "shoot-on-sight" does not accurately describe how he orders the forest rangers to deal with suspected poachers.
more here
http://www.bbc.com/news/world-south-asia-38909512
- 10 February 2017
- From the section India
Image copyright Getty Images
The authorities at a national park in India protect the wildlife by shooting suspected poachers dead. But has the war against poaching gone too far?
Kaziranga National Park is an incredible story of conservation success.
There were just a handful of Indian one-horned rhinoceros left when the park was set up a century ago in Assam, in India's far east. Now there are more than 2,400 - two-thirds of the entire world population.
This is where David Attenborough's team came to film for Planet Earth II. William and Catherine, the Duke and Duchess of Cambridge, came here last year.
But the way the park protects the animals is controversial. Its rangers have been given the kind of powers to shoot and kill normally only conferred on armed forces policing civil unrest.
Media captionEntire villages are being destroyed to make way for extended national parks
At one stage the park rangers were killing an average of two people every month - more than 20 people a year. Indeed, in 2015 more people were shot dead by park guards than rhinos were killed by poachers.
Innocent villagers, mostly tribal people, have been caught up in the conflict.
Rhinos need protection. Rhino horn can fetch very high prices in Vietnam and China where it is sold as a miracle cure for everything from cancer to erectile dysfunction. Street vendors charge as much as $6,000 for 100g - making it considerably more expensive than gold.
Indian rhinos have smaller horns than those of African rhinos, but reportedly they are marketed as being far more potent.
But how far should we go to protect these endangered animals?
I ask two guards what they were told to do if they encountered poachers in the park.
"The instruction is whenever you see the poachers or hunters, we should start our guns and hunt them," Avdesh explains without hesitation.
"You shoot them?" I ask.
"Yah, yah. Fully ordered to shoot them. Whenever you see the poachers or any people during night-time we are ordered to shoot them."
The government has granted the guards at Kaziranga extraordinary powers that give them considerable protection against prosecution if they shoot and kill people in the park.
Critics say guards like Avdesh and Jibeshwar are effectively being told to carry out "extrajudicial executions".
Getting figures for how many people are killed in the park is surprisingly difficult.
"We don't keep each and every account," says a senior official in India's Forest Department, which oversees the country's national parks.
Image caption Guards like Avdesh and Jibeshwar have considerable powers
The director of the park, Dr Satyendra Singh, is based at the park's impressive colonial-era headquarters.
He talks about the difficulties of tackling poachers in the park, explaining that the poaching gangs recruit local people to help them get into the park but that the actual "shooters" - the men who kill the rhinos - tend to come from neighbouring states.
He says the term "shoot-on-sight" does not accurately describe how he orders the forest rangers to deal with suspected poachers.
more here
http://www.bbc.com/news/world-south-asia-38909512
