Poaching attempt foiled at Kaziranga National Park

The peace and silence of Kaziranga National Park(KNP), the home to the world famous one horn rhino, has been shattered once again by the blazing of guns when an encounter took place between suspected poachers and forest security officials. Ikramul Mazid, the range officer of Burapahar range informed this correspondent that they heard gun shots at around 3.40 am in the morning near the Tuni Kati and Lahoroni forest camp. The forest guards retaliated immediately and they conducted a search operation in the area along with a sniffer dog named Zobra but the poachers managed to escape.

When asked Mazid about the effectiveness of using sniffer dog in tracing poacher, he said that Zobra has proved to be an indispensible part of the forest security system as it had helped to nab some miscreabnts having link with poacher last month. The sniffer dog Zobra is stationed at Bagori under the supervision of Araanyak, an NGO involved in the protection and preservation of wildlife. The involvement of Zobra in the tracing of entry and exit point of poachers has quite been a blessing for the forest guards. While talking to Assamtimes, Kaushik Baruah, Co-coordinator Sniffer Dog Programme of Araanyak, said that now the forest guard can locate the specific areas of activities of poachers, thereby helping the forest guards to take effective and immediate measures against the poachers. Baruah is hopeful that this is just the beginning of a long but successful fight against poaching and other illegal activities in KNP. It is to be mentioned that Zobra is a dog of Belgian Malinois breed, it’s the same breed of dog which was used by Navy Seals to capture Osama Bin Laden.