Dr. Rakesh Kumar Singh explaining various definitions under the Wildlife (Protection) Act, 1972_Navegaon NP_Maharashtra
Dr. Rakesh Kumar Singh explaining various definitions under the Wildlife (Protection) Act, 1972, Navegaon National Park, Maharashtra (Photo credit: Milind Pariwakam/WCT)

Participants during the field sessions at Navegaon National Park, Maharashtra. Photo Credit: Milind Pariwakam
Participants during the field sessions at Navegaon National Park, Maharashtra (Photo Credit:Milind Pariwakam/WCT)

WCT launches its training programme on "Wildlife Crime Prevention" for frontline forest staff with a three-day training programmes each for Navegaon National Park & Wildlife Sanctuary and Nagzira & New Nagzira Wildlife Sanctuaries between October 31 and November 5, 2012.
A total of 98 staff comprising of Conservatory of Forest, ACFs, RFOs, Foresters and Forest Guards participated in the training.
WCT acknowledges the need to strengthen the protection mechanism of national parks and sanctuaries  by building capacity of the field staff. To achieve this, It has introduced a rigorous Wildlife Crime Prevention and Law Enforcement training programme with several classroom and field sessions.
An incident which happened immediately after the training illustrates the importance of such programmes. The forest staff arrested a few people for illegally felling trees. In normal situations they would have booked such an offence under the Forest Conservation Act and the offenders would have managed to procure a bail almost immediately. However in this case, the field staff, fresh from the training, booked a case under the Wildlife (Protection) Act, 1972 as well for destruction of habitat. This strengthened the case and the offenders were denied bail and were kept in custody for 15 days.

Participants of Wildlife Crime Prevention Training_Nagzira Wildlife_Sanctuary
Participants of Wildlife Crime Prevention Training, Nagzira Wildlife Sanctuary,Maharashtra (Photo credit: Anish Andheria/WCT)
The second phase of training has already commenced for the 121 freshly recruited STPF staff of Tadoba-Andhari and Pench Tiger Reserves at the Chandrapur Forest Training Institute. WCT is also scheduled to train the entire field staff of both the Core and Buffer of Tadoba-Andhari Tiger Reserve from December 2 to 9, 2012. Read more

WCT_Training_STPF_Maharashtra
Freshly recruited STPF staff of Tadoba- Andhari TR & Pench TR participated in WCT’s Wildlife Crime Prevention Training at central forest ranger’s college, Chandrapur, Maharashtra (Photo credit: Anish Andheria/WCT)