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Leopard caged in Bijnor jungle, forest dept to transfer it to zoo
It isn’t clear if the captured animal was among the two leopards believed to have killed 13 persons over past 7 months
Forest department teams managed to trap and cage a leopard in Sadkapur village in district Bijnor on Tuesday.
It isn’t yet clear if the animal was one of the two maneater leopards which are believed to have attacked and killed 13 persons over the last seven months.
However, taking no chances, the forest department officials have decided against releasing the animal in the jungle. It has been decided to transfer the trapped leopard to a zoo instead, forest officials said.
Several teams of forest department officials and wildlife experts are carrying out an intensive search operation in the Bijnor jungles to identify and neutralise the leopards who have spread panic in the area.
Two leopards have been declared maneaters after forest department officials said they were found to have killed humans and ate their flesh. Forest department officials said orders have been issued to kill those maneaters if attempts to neutralise them failed.
Sub divisional officer, forest department, Gyan Singh, who is also involved in search operation said that 36 cages have been placed at different places to trap violent animals.
After a hectic search operation and a long wait of weeks, one leopard was trapped in a cage placed at village Sadakpur on Tuesday, he said.
Singh said that the leopard got injured while trying to escape from the cage. “It was treated by a team of veterinary experts”, said Singh and shared that the animal would soon be transferred to a zoo.
Singh said that the animal was caged near the spot where a 22-year-old woman Jamuna Devi was killed by the leopard on July 30. “The trapped animal might be the same who killed the woman”, said Singh who, however, clarified that he was not sure about it.
SDO said that identity of an animal is known by its pugmark and unfortunately, we had no pugmark of the animal which killed Jamuna Devi.
He further said that teams of forest department had caged 14 leopards in past seven months which were released in the jungle of Amangarh.
The official said that the forest department had banned releasing trapped leopards in the jungle of Amangarh Tiger Reserve in Bijnor district in wake of overpopulation of the animal in Amangarh. He said that district might have more than 200 animals. “Putting an effective check on movement of these animals near human population was indeed a difficult task but efforts are underway to prevent man-animal conflict in the area,” he said.
Experts said that the growing population of tigers inside the Amangarh Tiger Reserve, which is also a buffer zone of Jim Corbett National Park, seems to have pushed leopards outside the jungle and many of them had made sugarcane as their new hideout.
Search operation teams are using seven drones including thermal scanner drones, trap cameras, machan and vehicles to locate the maneater leopards.
