Poachers stalk elephants of Kerala after a gap of 20 years

One of the last members of an elephant poaching gang was arrested on 27 July. The total number of poachers and traffickers behind bars is now 24. Aikaramattom Vasu, the mastermind behind the diabolical operation that claimed up to 28 elephant lives, apparently committed suicide. South Indian forests haven’t seen poaching on this scale since the early 1990s. Less than a month after Tanzania announced the catastrophic decline in its elephant numbers, Kunjumon, a former forest watcher, confessed that a gang of poachers camped in the forests of Kerala had already killed more than 20 elephants in the past 10 months. The 62-year-old had been hired as a cook and witnessed the gang’s grisly business. It’s not clear if he walked into a forest department office and voluntarily provided details, or if the department officials arrested him on suspicion. However, even though Kunjumon provided the phone numbers of seven poachers and named the location of their camp in Vazhachal forests, officials were slow to act. They thought he was making it up and called him mentally deranged. When the forest department staff at the first station didn’t take him seriously, Kunjumon repeated his story to officials at another forest station. The department conducted a preliminary investigation and recovered an elephant carcass with Kunjumon’s help. Even as officials reacted with disbelief, Kunjumon said the gang had fatally shot elephants in various places in Vazhachal, Parambikulam, and Munnar in Kerala, and in the forests of the neighbouring states of Karnataka and Tamilnadu. After a tusker was shot, the gang, led by Aikaramattom Vasu, returned after a month to retrieve the tusks. The state’s ability to track wildlife crime has increased over the past two decades. Perhaps the forest officials were so confident in their abilities that they couldn’t believe Kunjumon’s tale of poachers slaughtering elephants with impunity. The state’s forest minister said the number was exaggerated. While officials didn’t know about the poaching operation, they were well aware of trafficking. They had seized ivory from 2012 onwards. In 2013, they seized nine tusks and two ivory statues that weighed 88 kg (194 lb). In 2014, they registered three more cases. However, they didn’t think the ivory was coming from their own state. They claimed Kerala was a transit hub for ivory smugglers and the ivory came from other states. Orissa has long been known as the elephant poaching capital of India. Two weeks after Kunjumon’s confession, the state government suspended four officials for dereliction of duty, recovered two elephant carcasses, and ordered an investigation. Relatives and accomplices of Vasu were arrested. The culprits sold the tusks, reportedly earning rupees 1 lakh (£ 1,000) for a kilogram, through a middleman to a dealer called Kolkata Thankachi. He transported the contraband to Kolkata where the tusks were turned into finished products such as idols of gods. A month after the initial confession, 19 people, including Vasu’s sister and her husband, had been arrested and about 56 kg (123 lb) of ivory seized. Vasu was found dead in a farmhouse at Dodamarg, Maharashtra. He had disguised himself as a labourer and hid in this remote area. A suicide note was allegedly found in his room. The latest person to be arrested was the dead man’s bodyguard and sharpshooter. Forest officials are on the lookout for two more culprits. It’s not clear how many elephants were killed by the poachers. Some reports say 25, others 28. But only seven elephant carcasses have been found. Despite alerting the officials to the gang’s activities, Kunjumon is also accused of being a poacher in the case. Uncontrolled elephant poaching in south Indian forests in previous decades had skewed sex ratios. Between the mid-1970s and mid-1980s, most bull elephants were wiped out in Kerala. At its worst, Periyar tiger reserve was estimated to have an elephant sex ratio of 1:122 in the late 1980s. This dismal situation prevailed until the mid to late 1990s. Elephant biologist Professor Sukumar estimates 336 to 388 elephants were killed over a 20-year period. To avoid a repeat of those bad old days, much more needs to be done to tackle wildlife crime. India plans to deploy drones in wildlife areas to monitor poachers and track wildlife. Kerala’s forest minister has called for a meeting with his counterparts in neighbouring states to control poaching, and the state has also sought the help of the Wildlife Crime Control Bureau. If Kerala’s elephants are lucky, this was perhaps the only such gang operating in the state and it has been hobbled.