Alipurduar: Sniffer dogs, long used on the crime trail, are now being deployed to keep jungles safe from poachers and animal parts smugglers in Bengal.

Three such dogs have been handed over to forest department recently, one each for the tiger reserve of the Sunderbans in south Bengal, and the Mahananda Wildlife Sanctuary and the Buxa Tiger Reserve in north Bengal.

On Thursday, Limsi (German Shepherd for the Mahananda forests also called Sukna) and Karim (Belgian Malinois for the Buxa reserve) reached north Bengal.

"Two sniffer dogs have reached north Bengal. They will help us a lot in preventing poaching and animal parts smuggling, besides checking tree felling," said Ujjwal Ghosh, chief conservator of forests (wildlife), north Bengal. Another officer said they are planning to bring four more dogs for other forests in the state.

At Buxa, foresters Suvendu Roy and Johny Sharma will look after Karim. Amit Subba and Pemba Lepcha will take care of Limsi in Sukna. The dogs eat all kinds of vegetables and milk and, once a day, they are given 400gm of meat. Separate shelters have been constructed for them. The dogs were put on duty from Thursday.

The Belgian Malinois has been selected for Buxa as the reserve is smaller in size but dense, requiring more intensive searches, foresters said. These dogs are known to be tough and alert, they added.

According to a department source, sniffer dogs, which already help many other departments such as police and other law-enforcement agencies, will assist forest officials control crime inside jungles.

So far, only Madhya Pradesh had used sniffer dogs in forests. Traffic, an international organisation that works to control crime, has trained the three Bengal dogs for the past nine months in Gwalior, Madhya Pradesh.

The dogs have learned tracking, guarding, sniffing and ways to follow all kinds of instructions. One officer and one forest guard have been coached for each dog, taught how to handle the animals properly and with care.

The deployments of the dog come against the backdrop of growing forest crimes in recent times, including smuggling of animal parts and related seizures from different parts of north Bengal.

Poachers have on the prowl too, killing a large number of elephants and rhinos over the past year. Forest officials have received information that poaching gangs from Arunachal Pradesh and Meghalaya are concentrating on north Bengal's forests, especially Buxa as the reserve is closer by virtue of being located on the Assam-Bengal border.

With an ongoing drive to increase the number of tigers at Buxa, it has become important to ensure that the reserve is free from criminals, forest officials said.