After foiled ‘supari’ hit on Udanti tiger, wildlife bureau rings poaching alarm

Raipur: The sensational unravelling of an alleged supari contract to kill a tiger at Chhattisgarh’s Udanti-Sitanadi reserve triggered a nationwide alarm, with the Wildlife Crime Control Bureau (WCCB) flagging increased poaching threats to big cats and ordering heightened vigilance across key habitats.

The alert, marked ‘most urgent’, calls for heightened vigilance against the poaching of tigers, lions, leopards, snow leopards and cheetahs, citing ‘credible inputs’ and analysis of seizures of big cat body parts in illegal wildlife trade networks.

The directive comes as a direct follow-up to recent intelligence patterns — including the Udanti case — that point towards organised efforts and possible interstate linkages in wildlife crime.

Focus on central India, border routes

According to the WCCB order, specific alerts have gone out for central India, Terai and southern landscapes regions that include key tiger habitats — while the north-eastern borders have been identified as sensitive routes for outward illegal wildlife trade.

This places central India, including Chhattisgarh and Madhya Pradesh forest belts, firmly within the high-risk zone.

The bureau has called on enforcement agencies to ramp up patrolling in core, buffer and fringe forest areas, while activating informer networks in forest-fringe villages to gather ground intelligence.

It has also directed surveillance of “suspected nomadic settlements” and suspicious individuals, particularly around transit points such as railway stations, bus stands, religious places, abandoned buildings and public shelters — locations often used as temporary hubs in wildlife trafficking chains.

The alert outlined specific preventive measures, including drives against illegal electric fencing, poisoning of carcasses and setting of snares in and around protected areas — all common methods used by poachers.

Agencies have also been asked to monitor online platforms for illegal advertisements related to big cat body parts and derivatives, signalling a shift towards tracking digital trafficking channels.

Multi-agency coordination

In a clear push for coordinated action, the WCCB has called for joint operations involving local police, forest departments, railways, intelligence units and border guarding forces to track and intercept wildlife contraband.

The alert stressed the need for preventive searches, seizures and arrests based on intelligence inputs, indicating a move towards pre-emptive enforcement rather than reactive action.

The development assumes significance in the backdrop of the Udanti-Sitanadi case, where investigators recently uncovered a first-of-its-kind alleged contract to kill a tiger — a revelation that raised alarms about the presence of organised poaching networks in Chhattisgarh.

Officials said the red alert suggests that such incidents may not be isolated, but part of a broader pattern emerging across multiple landscapes.

With forest access expanding in previously inaccessible areas and illegal wildlife trade continuing to fetch high returns, enforcement agencies now face the dual challenge of protecting vulnerable habitats while tracking increasingly sophisticated poaching syndicates.