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| Wednesday, 03 November 2004 |
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An invitation to timber pirates
IT was not an extraordinary National Park visit, until we started chasing poachers. The Wildlife Department tracker in the hired jeep was suddenly directing us off the rough track we were following right on to the dried up tank bed. When we came upon a deep ditch and the vehicle could not go any further, the young man jumped off and began a difficult chase on foot- after two timber poachers who had been sawing off teak logs right in the heart of the National Park. We could see the two human figures - running for their lives, dodging both cattle and elephant, as they tried to outrun the tracker. A long saw glittered in the fading sunlight as one of them threw away the heavy tool into the scrub. They quickly disappeared in the tall grassland and we lost sight of them. It took the tracker and jeep driver (who had also joined in the chase) another 15 minutes to find the discarded saw. Just ten years ago, visitors to Uda Walawe National Park were greeted by towering, lush teak forest right at the entrance. This Forest Department owned planted forest of well-matured teak existed deep in to the park. For decades the high population of elephants had merely ignored the teak, using the tree cover for afternoon shade and nothing else. But suddenly, a severe drought and the sudden lack of grasses and other edible fauna drove the elephants to seek out the teak. They did not merely munch on a few leaves. The elephants tore down the trees to get at the new leafy shoots and also consumed the bark. Today, the teak forest is no more. The few measly stumps that have been left standing are but a sad reminder of the forest that used to be. The elephants have totally destroyed the teak plantation, leaving large amounts of teak logs lying all over the southern fringes of the park. This is like an open invitation to villagers or professional 'timber poachers'. "They don't see why such a lot of valuable wood should just decay in the forest, when they can earn Rs. 500 to 1000 by just cutting off a few feet of log. The people around here are poor. And here is a huge resource going absolutely waste," our young tracker explained as we made our way back to the Park entrance with the saw. One expert estimated recently that the loss to the government coffers by losing this teak plantation was around Rs. 11 million. Not a small amount for a constantly cash-trapped state. The sad part is that the elephants do not really prefer teak as food - in which case this plantation would have been devoured long ago. Much of the Wildlife Department's efforts at Uda Walawe are directed now at protecting these destroyed patches of teak from timber poaching. An utter waste of time, according to many. The Park's routine work is interrupted almost daily by reports of poaching and nabbing culprits is almost impossible. The timber, even at this late stage, should be removed and the cleared areas should contain more scrub and secondary vegetation that is preferred by elephants - or if larger species need to be replanted, they should be of indigenous variety that is found in good elephant habitat. Instead of fighting off villagers in a bid to save an already destroyed plantation forest, the Department should make this an opportunity to work with the local community in trying to clear the fallen logs and in the process, ridding themselves of the huge headache of keeping poaching at bay. |
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Produced by Lake House |
by Tharuka Dissanaike
