Tag before being tugged away: A tusker in north Bengal

Siliguri, Jan. 25: The Union ministry of environment and forests will use technology to tackle trafficking in elephants.

The Bengal and Assam forest departments, which have a healthy pachyderm population, have turned happy hunting grounds for animal traders who forge documents of ownership at forest check posts to sneak the elephants into other states where they are then sold.

Without means to identify fake documents, which resemble authentic ones to the last detail, and keen on crushing the illegal trade, forest officials said, the department will implant the animals with subcutaneous microchips to establish a permanent identity for each individual.

“All 69 domesticated forest elephants will be tagged within two months,” they said.

The initiative, under Project Elephant, will be undertaken throughout the country. Conservator of forest (wildlife), north Bengal, J.T. Mathews said: “Elephants are being taken illegally from one state to another with the help of forged documents. We came up with the idea of tagging the animals because it is foolproof.”

The microchips, which will be inserted beneath the skin behind the ear of the elephants, will carry identification codes along with date of birth of the animal.

“With the help of laser detector, the forest personnel at the check posts can decode the information. This initiative will give the forest department access to an identification procedure that cannot go wrong and in turn, help the department crack down on the forgers,” said divisional forest officer (wildlife), Darjeeling, Raju Das.

The forest department in the northeastern states has completed the preliminaries and have already put the microchip system to practice.

A team of experts will hold workshops on January 29 and 30 to train the forest officials and staff on the method of inserting the microchip and decoding the information. “A minor operation will be needed to plant the chip. A laser scanner will read the code numbers. The chips are being brought from Germany, said Mathews.