The three-year-old leopard which had made the Yamuna Biodiversity Park its ‘home’ for about a month, was finally captured on Saturday morning, with animal lovers across the national Capital and Delhi Forest Department officials expressing relief that the big cat had been captured alive and an ugly man-animal conflict had been avoided.
The leopard’s capture comes in the wake of the gruesome death of another leopard in Gurugram which was beaten to death by a frenzied mob of villagers while Forest Department officials stood mute spectators to the cold blooded murder of the hapless animal.
“We had been on a restless combing operation and are happy that the leopard was finally rescued, before either the animal or any villagers were hurt by each other,” Forest Department official VB Dasan said. The animal is being relocated to Saharanpur.
The big cat was spotted in November this year, leading the Forest Department to set up traps to capture it, said Chief Wildlife Warden AK Shukla. “This is the first time that a big cat has been captured alive in Delhi. At present, the leopard has been put in the ‘quarantine zone’ of Delhi Zoo where it will undergo a medical examination. If found healthy, it will be translocated to either Uttar Pradesh or Haryana,” said Shukla.
A quarantine zone is a reserved area where particular species of animals are kept in isolation and taken care of.
According to Shukla, the big cat had probably strayed from its family either from the Hastinapur Wildlife Sanctuary in Uttar Pradesh or the Kalesar National Park in Haryana and made its way to Delhi along the river.
“After setting up cameras and traps, the Forest Department found that the leopard had taken a Nilgai fawn as prey about 10 to 12 days ago,” he said. Following its tracks, the wildlife experts were able to isolate the leopard’s location and coax it toward a cage with a goat as bait.
“We figured out that it would have an empty stomach so we used bait to capture it,” said Shukla.
Shukla further said that in the past few days the animal had changed its territory. The camera traps and the cage location had to be changed according to its movement.
The leopard sighting had raised alarms for the Forest Department due to its proximity to habitation. Shukla said that due to “unauthorised cultivation on the riverbed and villages like Wazirabad in the vicinity” of the biodiversity park, the department was worried.
“He will now be taken to the Delhi zoo where his blood and excreta will be tested to ascertain his health. After that we will decide where it can be taken,” Shukla said.
The animal was first captured on camera on November 21, after verifying that the animal had been living in the biodiversity park.
Though this was the first time that a leopard was caught alive in Delhi, Shukla said it wasn’t the first instance of a big cat straying into the Capital. last year, he said, a female leopard and two young ones were spotted in Usmanpur.
“Apart from one, they got way. The one that was found had died due to snakebite,” said Shukla.
He added that another leopard had strayed into the Sainik Farms area of South Delhi in 2002, but it had died, probably due to an overdose of tranquilliser.
Delhi and Gurgaon are not exceptional cases: leopards have a long history of co-existence with people here. The big cats have cohabited the forest fringes and rural-forest continuum for generations, living close to human settlements and preying on domestic animals, dogs and occasionally people. While most of these interactions have been largely peaceful, some have turned ugly under the glare of the media.