Punjab, one of India’s least forested States, is challenging the perception that wildlife crimes are confined to dense jungles and protected areas.
A new study has identified emerging wildlife crime hotspots in the agrarian State, whose forest cover is less than 3.6% of its geographical area of 50,362 sqkm. The findings underline how illegal hunting, trafficking, and trade networks adapt to a human-dominated landscape by exploiting gaps in monitoring and enforcement.
Human super-predators not always ‘super-scary’ to wildlife, finds study
Tarn Taran-based citizen scientist Navdeep Sood and Rohan Kumar of Lovely Professional University in Phagwara are the authors of the study, published in the latest issue of the Journal of Threatened Taxa.
Their study documents 32 incidents of wildlife crime in Punjab between 2019 and 2024, affecting thousands of animals, many endangered. Apart from wild boars, leopards, tigers, sambars, freshwater turtles, and Tibetan antelopes, the trafficked animals include marine species.
