BAHAWALNAGAR: The Punjab Wildlife Department claims to have arrested three poachers of protected animals in Cholistan and recovered 1,047 spiny-tailed lizards from them.

Talking to Dawn, Bahawalnagar Wildlife Department District Officer Munawwar Hussain Najmi says a wildlife team searched two suspicious pickups on Wednesday during the routine patrol and found 1,047 lizards in them.

He says the team seized the lizards and handed over three suspects, identified as Maqbool, Riaz and Muhammad Ameen, to the Marot police.

The officer says the spiny-tailed lizard is in the list of protected species along with deer, python and other animals and its hunting is prohibited. However, despite the ban, he bemoans, poachers often hunt the lizard because of the myths that the oil from its body can cure several ailments and it works as an aphrodisiac.

The lizard is called Saanda in local language, while it’s also known as Saara hardwickii, commonly known as Hardwicke’s spiny-tailed lizard or the Indian spiny-tailed lizard. The species is mostly found in patches across the Thar Desert, Kutch, Cholistan and arid zones in Pakistan and India.

Mr Najmi says the poachers, after catching the lizard, break its backbone to stop it from escaping. They burn the lizard and extract oil from its body, which is sold at exorbitant rates, he adds.

Explaining the phenomenon of poaching, the officer says the protected animals were being hunted on a large scale because in the past, the poachers would go free after paying a small fine or minor punishment; however, now, under the Punjab Protected Areas Act 2020, hunting animals in the protected list is a non-bailable offence with hefty fines.

He says because the lizards live in natural habitat; therefore, it is not possible to keep them in a zoo or any other place and they die in captivity within hours.

Mr Najmi says among the recovered animals dozens were injured and their backbones had been broken by the poachers while several others had already died. He says among the recovered lizards, the healthy ones (about 100 in number) have been freed in the Cholistan desert while the remaining lizards, including the injured as well as the dead, would be auctioned.

Published in Dawn, September 10th, 2021