Buddha Purnima this year was celebrated without causing any harm to the wild animals at the annual tribal jungle hunting festival in Ayodhya Hills, Purulia.
The state forest department has been responsible for this non-poaching celebration of the famous Sendra Utsav.
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Every year tribal people gather at the hills on Buddha Purnima to set out on an impromptu poaching voyage plundering forest harmony by subjecting a considerable cross section of wild life to death.
Purulia has always been the sanctuary of the state’s eclectic flora and fauna with animals ranging from bear, spotted deer, barking deer, wild boar, hyenas, wolves, pangolins, elephants, leopards, pythons, cobras, peacocks, monkeys, porcupines, turtles, rabbits, wild hen, jackal and nilgai.
Recently, a leopard couple reproduced and the cubs were captured on the hidden camera of the forest department. The only place in the Indian sub-continent which can boast of the rare ant eating scaly pangolins apart from the Ayodhya Hills is the Himalayan mountain range. They have been included under the red-inked endangered species list by the World Wildlife Fund or WWF.
As a result, with fastest forest expansion Purulia along with Ayodhya Hills is the go-to weekend destination for tourists from the state and beyond.
As per WWF, the last two-and-a-half decades saw more than 3,000 animals poached over a 500 square feet green stretch of the Ayodhya Hills. As most of the animals hunted belonged to the endangered bracket, the WWF imposed limitations on festivals like Sendra in 1999.
As per law, hunting or poaching is illegal. Because of this, the Sendra Utsav had been banned, under Wild Life Conservation Act 1972. Yet the tribal population celebrated it with vigour. Earlier, poaching flourished in places like Ayodhya, Matha, Jhalda, Balarampur, Kotshila, Arsha forests. This year the forest department took the help of cultural awareness programmes with community feasts, called langars, which included some sumptuous meat like pork and chicken. Folk artists performed under the Lok Prasar Scheme of the state government all intended at anti-poaching enlightenment of the forest villagers during the last one month. The measures have borne fruit.
Bidyut Sarkar, chief conservator of forests, south west circle led the anti-poaching awareness team at Ayodhya Hills. With assistance from the Purulia district police, the forest department set up 40 check posts at various places in Ayodhya Hills to prevent tribal people trespassing into the wild.