Conservation is rarely about protecting animals alone. It is about protecting an entire ecological system – and understanding the human behaviour that threatens it. For 2018 batch Indian Forest service (IFS) officer of Maharashtra cadre, Mr Anand Reddy Yellu, that responsibility has taken him from village classrooms and conversations with children to high-risk operations across India’s North-East.
His recent role in the Rajura Poaching Case in Chandrapur district illustrates the hard-edged side of wildlife protection. Through intelligence gathering and coordinated cross-State operations, IFS Reddy and his team traced a sophisticated tiger-poaching network, leading to the arrest of key operatives, including an ex-Army operative in Shillong and a hawala operator in Aizawl. The investigation revealed links between Central Indian poachers, North-Eastern intermediaries and illegal wildlife markets connected to South-East Asia.
But Mr Reddy’s conservation journey also demonstrates another side of the battle – one that begins not with arrests, but with awareness. Years earlier in Nashik, he encountered a forest where something seemed strangely absent: birds. The culprit was not an organised criminal syndicate, but hundreds of children armed with slingshots.
In both situations, his objective was the same: break the chain that allows wildlife crime to survive. Indian Masterminds spoke to Mr Reddy, currently serving as Deputy Director (Core), Tadoba-Andhari Tiger Reserve (TATR), Chandrapur, to learn more about the initiative, the thinking behind it and how it has contributed to the fight against wildlife crime.
How It Started: When a Silent Forest Raised Questions
During his posting in Nashik, Mr Reddy, an enthusiastic wildlife photographer, found himself puzzled by the silence of a lush forest landscape in the Western Ghats.
The greenery was abundant, the trees moved gently in the breeze, but the birds were missing.
He soon discovered why. Children from neighbouring villages were regularly using slingshots, or gulels, to hunt birds, either for sport or meat. Many birds had been killed, while others had fled the area.
Read Also: How One Forest Officer Used Science, Cyber Intelligence and Law to Take on Tiger Poaching
For Reddy, the answer could not simply be punishment.
“But I was clear from the beginning,” he recalled, “that the children could not be punished for the crime, despite there being a provision for it in the law. I wanted to change their mindsets, so that they willingly stop their cruel acts.”
He also looked beyond the immediate act to understand why the practice existed.
“For a long time, people have been using slingshots and similar contraptions on wildlife, to bring meat to their pots. Apparently, the folks here passed on this practice to the children and nobody objected to it,” he explained.
That understanding shaped his approach.
Turning Awareness Into Action
With World Environment Day 2021 approaching, Reddy decided against holding a conventional ceremonial programme. Instead, he chose to engage directly with the children.
He formed a team of 25 forest officials and organized a workshop attended by hundreds of children.
The message was simple but powerful: birds were not merely creatures to be hunted. They played an important role in the ecosystem and in agriculture by feeding on worms and insects that could damage crops.
“In this workshop, we told the kids about the importance of birds. We told them that by eating worms and insects, birds were helping the farmers in getting better crops,” he said.
The children listened because, in many cases, nobody had explained the ecological connection to them before.
But Reddy did not stop at one workshop.
Over the next 38 days, he and his team travelled through 93 villages, reaching more than 7,000 children. The Forest Department also provided incentives such as painting sets, chocolates, basketballs and, in some cases, bicycles to children who surrendered their slingshots.
The response was remarkable.
As many as 684 slingshots were voluntarily surrendered.
The initiative demonstrated that conservation can sometimes begin with something as basic as a conversation—and that changing behaviour may be more effective than simply enforcing a law.
From Local Poaching to Organized Wildlife Crime
IFS Reddy’s later work in Chandrapur brought him face-to-face with a very different category of wildlife crime.
The Rajura Poaching Case exposed a network far more organized than individual acts of hunting. The investigation required intelligence gathering, coordination and operations extending well beyond Maharashtra.
“Last year, I was involved in the capture of the poachers in the Chandrapur district. I took a small team and went to the North-East. I arrested a middleman from Shillong,” Reddy told Indian Masterminds.
That arrest proved to be a crucial breakthrough.
“After that, the case was opened. I took him to the Madhya Pradesh government. I got a link from many poachers,” he said.
The trail subsequently led investigators towards Mizoram, where another operation resulted in the arrest of a hawala trader.
“After that, I led another operation in Mizoram. There too, I arrested a hawala trader. Now, all the people who have been arrested are in the Chandrapur jail. Investigation is going on.”
Breaking the Entire Chain
For Mr Reddy, arresting an individual poacher is only one part of the job. The larger challenge is dismantling the ecosystem that enables wildlife crime.
“If we catch someone, we catch the poachers. The rest of the people leave the network,” he said, underlining why investigators must go further.
His approach is to identify every link—from the person who kills the animal to those who transport, finance and facilitate the trade.
“It is important to break a whole line to prevent poaching. From poachers to middlemen, hawala traders. If you break the whole line, it does not take long to recover.”
That philosophy was particularly important in the Rajura investigation, where the trail reportedly connected Central Indian poachers with intermediaries in the North-East and illicit wildlife markets associated with South-East Asia.
By targeting both the wildlife-trafficking route and the financial pipeline, investigators were able to strike at the infrastructure supporting the illegal trade.
Intelligence, Risk and the Fight Beyond State Borders
The operation also highlighted an increasingly important reality of wildlife protection: wildlife crime does not respect administrative boundaries.
A tiger may be poached in one State, its body parts moved through several others, money transferred through illicit channels, and the final market located outside India.
That makes conventional, localized enforcement insufficient.
The arrest of key operatives in Shillong and Aizawl therefore represented more than individual breakthroughs. It helped investigators understand the wider architecture of the network and its transnational connections.
The success of the investigation also brought national recognition. Reddy was subsequently appointed to the National Tiger Conservation Authority’s five-member National Special Investigation Team (SIT) tasked with recommending measures to strengthen anti-poaching efforts.
In this role, his frontline experience can feed directly into national-level strategy.
Two Approaches, One Conservation Goal
The contrast between Reddy’s Nashik and Chandrapur experiences is striking.
In Nashik, the challenge involved children who had inherited a harmful practice. The answer was education, engagement and a change of mindset.
In the Rajura case, the threat came from organized criminals operating through sophisticated networks. Here, the response demanded intelligence-led investigation, tactical operations and strict enforcement.
Reddy himself draws a distinction between these forms of poaching.
“When we deal with poaching, it has different profiles. It is also a type of poaching. We have to address the child through awareness generation,” he said.
But organized, transnational wildlife crime requires a fundamentally different response.
“This line, proper transnational poaching, we should deal with the hard line in law enforcement. In this, awareness is not used much.”
Conservation Beyond the Tiger
IFS Reddy’s work illustrates that protecting wildlife requires interventions at multiple levels.
Sometimes, it means standing before hundreds of children and explaining why a bird matters. Sometimes, it means travelling thousands of kilometres with a small team to pursue a suspect. And sometimes, it means following a financial trail to uncover the people operating behind the poachers.
The common thread is persistence.
From 684 surrendered slingshots to the dismantling of a sophisticated tiger-poaching network, Reddy’s journey reflects a broader lesson in conservation: the most effective protection begins by understanding the threat – and then confronting it at its source.
Whether the threat is a child who does not yet understand the value of a bird or an organised syndicate profiting from the death of a tiger, the objective remains unchanged—to ensure that India’s forests continue to have the sounds of wildlife that first inspired their protection.
