As every year, flocks of migratory birds have started arriving at the start of winter from the Himalayas, Siberia and other cold regions. These visitors have been seen in the canals, beels and wetlands of Narail, a district in the south-west.

With their arrival, local poachers are flouting the law and killing birds on a large scale; hunting migratory birds has become like a festival. The administration has been entirely silent on the matter.

Poachers are reported to have become reckless. Beels and wetlands in Narail's three upazilas, including Chanchuri beel, Ichhamati beel, Karar beel, Nalamara beel and the Gopalpur-Bogura beel, are already alive with the calls of thousands of migratory birds.

Among them are bali hansh, kalkoch, kayem, dunkor, cormorants, patari hansh, hansh dingi, snipes, khoyra, chega, kachichora, madantak, shamukkhola and egrets. Poachers are using traps and a variety of novel methods, and the places where the birds used to roam freely have gradually become death traps.

Sources say birds of different species come every year from cold countries at the start of winter. They arrive in flocks mainly from November-December and stay until March-April, returning home when winter ends. This year has been no exception.

Talking to several local poachers, it emerged that they once caught birds by baiting fish and grasshopper-like insects with poison, mixing in sleeping pills or setting traps. Now, with the help of technology, they fool the birds easily. For a long time poachers at these beels and wetlands have recorded the calls of different bird species on mobile phones at night. Watching for birds moving in the night sky, they set large nets over the beels and wetlands, then play the recorded calls through sound boxes. Hearing the calls, the birds think their companions are resting safely there, and as they come down, lured by these ever-new tricks, they are caught in the nets. In this way birds are killed indiscriminately every day from dusk until late at night.

The birds also fall to poachers in the morning, when they leave their safe night-time roosts in search of food. By day poachers set small and large traps made of nylon thread in the birds' flight paths, and hundreds of birds are caught in them as they fly about day and night. Some poachers also use hooks or current nets. Thousands of migratory birds are killed every night; the poachers hunt all night and sell the birds before dawn.

Poacher Alim said there was great demand for migratory birds in the market, so however they are caught, there is no problem selling them. "They even reach the homes of buyers who have booked in advance before dawn. These buyers are people from the elite of society," he said.

It is alleged that the local administration pretends not to see any of this. Several poachers who did not want to be named said: "We hunt birds every night after giving money and birds to the local administration, because some people in the administration are also buyers of these birds."

In some cases, by sending birds to their homes, the poachers carry on hunting undisturbed, which is why there is no stopping their menace.

Deputy Commissioner Mohammad Habibur Rahman said migratory birds were one of the country's assets and it was everyone's duty to protect them. Under section 38(1) of the Wildlife (Conservation and Security) Act 2012, hunting or catching migratory birds is a punishable offence, he said. Poachers would certainly be brought to book if they could be identified, and as soon as specific information about them was received they would be punished through a mobile court.

Source: Jagonews24. First published in Bengali on The Agro News.