Delhi forest dept officials to be trained in leopard rescue ops
Delhi forest officials to receive training in Mumbai on tackling leopards in urban areas, following recent sightings in Asola Bhatti Wildlife Sanctuary.
The forest and wildlife department of the Delhi government is planning to send more than 40 officials to the Sanjay Gandhi National Park (SGNP) in Mumbai where they will receive training on how to tackle a leopard if spotted in an urban area. After a series of on-ground trainings and workshops, the forest staff will carry out awareness drives among the local residents in Delhi, where leopards have been recently sighted, particularly in all the human settlements around the Asola Bhatti Wildlife Sanctuary in the Capital, the department said on Wednesday.
The department said that the staff, which will comprise of forest guards and rangers, will head to Mumbai in four separate batches. The first batch is likely to head there next month.
The forest officials will be trained by members of the Wildlife Conservation Society (WCS-India) and the local authorities, who deal with man-animal conflicts on a regular basis in the area. SGNP is home to a sizeable leopard population, which has led to a number of conflicts between humans and the big cats in its vicinity. In 2011, a campaign, “Mumbaikars for SGNP”, was launched by the NGO, to help residents cope with the idea of co-existing with leopards.
The department said that two workshops have already been held by the NGO on Monday and Tuesday in Delhi, with expert members from WCS-India, including leopard expert Vidya Athreya and former principal chief conservator of forests (Wildlife) from Maharashtra Sunil Limaye, interacting with forest officials and explaining the Mumbai model.
“We showed them, through presentations, what is being done in Mumbai around SNGP and also presented them different scenarios and how to act in different situations. Both the forest staff and the public need to ensure the safety of people and animal. We also did brainstorming with the forest department and looked at the problems they faced during the rescue operations in Delhi in the last few months,” said Nikit Surve, wildlife biologist, human wildlife interaction programme at WCS-India, who was also part of the workshops, held at the Delhi Secretariat and Asola Bhatti Wildlife Sanctuary respectively.
A senior forest department official on condition of anonymity said that the plan is to train dedicated teams from all four forest divisions in Delhi, who will be equipped to handle human-leopard conflicts, and sensitise the local residents. “This has worked in Mumbai, where conflicts have significantly reduced around SGNP. We want the same to happen around Asola and in other urban spaces too,” he said.
On April 1, a leopard entered Jagatpur village in north Delhi, where it attacked and injured over eight different people, before it was cornered and locked into a house. The animal was eventually released in the Asola Bhatti Wildlife Sanctuary, where the department is planning to conduct a fresh leopard census. In 2022, eight leopards were recorded on camera traps as part of a year-long mammal census.