In a major setback to the prime project of the State Government, lion Kuber died on Thursday morning at the lion Safari at Etawah. The lion had been suffering from canine distemper since April 16 at the Safari for which it was being treated. Forest officials confirmed the death of the animal and said that the carcass had been sent to IVRI Bareilly for post-mortem which will give the exact cause of the death. Kuber was the youngest of all the lions and the ninth one to have died at the Safari and had been brought from Rajkot.
Talking to The Pioneer a senior forest official from the lion Safari said, ‘lion Kuber died in the morning. He had been suffering from canine distemper for the past one and half months. The lion was being treated by the experts from the IVRI, Deen Dayal Upadhaya Veteniary University and Research Centre Mathura”. Currently the lion safari is left with seven lions” he said. With the death of Kuber the death toll of lions increases since the time the big cats were transferred to the Safari. The official said that a total four adults lions and five lion cubs have died at the Safari.
A Senior scientist from IVRI while talking to The Pioneer said that the canine distemper was a disease that occured mostly in dogs. “This is a viral disease and is transferred through contact or through bites of the carrier animal and brings about a complete breakdown of the immune system and impacts the nervous system too” he said. When asked why the animal had died when he was being treated for the same, the scientist said, ‘The treatment is merely symptomatic wherein the treatment is done only of the symptoms that appear and there is still no vaccine for the disease” said the scientist.
Meanwhile regarding the condition of the other lions the official said, ‘It was only the lion Kuber who was suffering from the canine distemper while the other lions had tested negative for the same disease when these tests were conducted by the IVRI”.
Incidentally the Forest Department had made efforts to prevent the spread of the disease amongst the other lions in the past few months. “There was a drive to vaccinate all the stray dogs within the vicinity of the Safari” he said. The Forest official refused to comment when asked whether the lion Safari was suitable for the lions. The lion Safari, one of the major projects, has been through several hurdles in the past. Envisaged at the time of the Mulayam Singh Yadav’s Government in 2005 the Safari as an idea was given up because of the presence of prosopis at the Fischer Forests where the Safari was being constructed which was not condusive to the lions.
However since the time Akhilesh Yadav came to power as the Chief Minister, the project was revived with gusto.
The death of the first pair of lions Vishnu and laxmi had created the first ripples of apprehension of the unsuitability of the area for the lions and the death of lioness Tapasya later added to them. The death of the five cubs also raised eye brows but forest officials said that this was natural and had occurred because the lioness had become mothers for the first time. The surviving lions and lioness are Jessica. Grisshma, Pataudi, Manan, Heer and Kuari.
It may be noted that the Forest Department had recently shifted the Chief Wildlife Warden Rupak De as Advisor to the lion Safari and given the charge of the Chief Wildlife Warden to Umendra Sharma.