A couple of quick facts first. Since 1986, the Asian elephant has been listed as Endangered on the IUCN Red List. This is because its population in the wild has declined by at least 50% over the past century. One of the causes for the dramatic decline has been poaching. Asian male elephants are poached for their tusks which skews the sex ratio as the breeding rate of the animal gets constrained.
Historically, used to produce ivory ornaments, figurines, small carvings, chess pieces, and piano keys, ivory has long been considered to the domain of the uber rich. Traditional medicine also considers ivory as a healing element, using ivory powder to create medicine for a variety of illnesses.
The method is which a poacher removes the tusks of the male elephant is by killing it painfully. And this, forms the crux of the wildlife thriller, Poacher, that has been released on Amazon Prime Video as an eight-episode series.
Shines A Light On Unsung Government Officials Protecting Kerala’s Wildlife
Co-produced by Alia Bhatt, Poacher is about the unsung government officials going about the onerous and painstaking job of protecting Kerala’s wildlife. The forest rangers and officials wage an arduous and constant war against elephant poachers who operate as pawns in a huge and powerful net of the illegal trade’s stakeholders. They are challenged in multiple ways, at times overstretched, at times conflicted. They are ordinary men and women with their own personal backgrounds, tasked with bringing the criminals to book. They chip away steadily with intent as the stakes rise steadily, with powerful pressures coming their way.
Poacher Remains True To Its Genre
The series does not shun its genre. The protagonists are on a mission and that is to bust a network of players in the illegal ivory trade. They will stop at nothing to achieve their end.
They are heroes in the making. But even as they operate within a good-guys-versus-bad-guys narrative construct, these are flesh and blood individuals, real and imminently relatable.
Bengali