A full-grown leopard strayed into Raigunj and injured 15 persons

A full-grown leopard strayed into Raigunj and triggered panic in the north Bengal town. It was finally trapped and tranquilized by foresters after a cat-and-mouse game with locals, NGO workers and cops that lasted for nearly 11 hours.
This has been reported in timesofindia.indiatimes.com dated 3 January 2017.

Raigunj does not have any forest cover that can be considered ideal for leopards and there has been no sighting ever been reported from the green patches around it. In the opinion of foresters, the animal must have crossed over from Bihar. As per a Wildlife Institute of India study, Bihar at present is home to around 32 wild leopards and,experts believe that the figure could be much more because many more leopards live outside the protected areas of the state.
Two years ago, there was a similar incident of a leopard straying into an urban settlement in Siliguri. Obviously, the endangered species is fast losing ground due to rapid urbanization. A recent survey by Wildlife Institute of India has put the leopard population in India at 12,000-14,000 and, at least 50% of them live outside protected areas and are vulnerable to conflict with humans.
Data collected by Wildlife Protection Society of India (WPSI) indicates 436 leopard deaths during 2016. This includes 154 cases of poaching.


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Leopard enters a hotel in Nainital and creates panic - leaves on its own

Nainital is a hilly place and tourist spot with forest around and it is natural for wild animals like leopards to be seen around but, when such an animal enters a hotel, it creates understandable panic. And, that is what happened. It was the second instance of a wild animal wandering into human habitation.
Earlier this month, on July 10, a Himalayan bear was spotted swimming in Naini lake - it had presumably come from a nearby jungle. Now, it was a leopard that created a furor in the hill town. It walked into a hotel after breaking a glass window and entered a room occupied by a couple. The hotel is in the Tallital area and the incident happened at around 4.30am.
This has been reported in timesofindia.indiatimes.com dated 31 July 2016.

Once the alarm was raised, it rushed into the bathroom attached to the room from where it escaped through the ventilation window after a couple of hours. The occupant of the room was awakened by the sound of shattering glass and saw the leopard. When the rescue team tried to bring it safely out, it was scared by the noise and tried to attack one of the personnel who was trying to sedate it with a dart gun. Subsequently, it managed to escape on its own.
It seems it had drifted into the town in search of food at the garbage mound near Hanumangarhi and was probably chased by dogs. Tat made it come to the hotel and, seeing its image reflected in the window, it probably mistook it for another leopard and attacked the reflection. Thus it broke the window and entered.


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Leopard drops in on a school in Bengaluru - tranquilized and sent back to the forest

#leopard #Bangalore #Bannerghatta A leopard had dropped in on a school in Bengaluru - it was subsequently tranquilized and sent back to the forest. The incident happened in Bengaluru's Vibgyor school and the animal was finally caught and taken to the Bannerghatta rescue center.
This has been reported in ibnlive.com dated 8 February 2016.

The forest officials and police teams struggled to capture the leopard that had entered the school and was prowling in the campus for hours. It attacked four persons and injured them - one of them was a veterinarian. The feline was ultimately tranquilized after a day long operation, and the injured were shifted to a nearby hospital.
The leopard was first spotted by CCTV cameras inside the school early morning and the authorities immediately informed forest officials and police who rushed to the spot. During the day, it had escaped from the school premises and had been hiding in nearby bushes and later re-entered the school building by scaling a compound wall.
It was a wonderful opportunity for a sensational TV news and television channels gathered at the spot to cover the operation. AS a result, the police had a hard time controlling the crowd.

Image courtesy wikimediacommons.org

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Easy money in Uttarakhand - villagers kill leopards for Rs 2000 apiece

Villagers of Uttarskhand are earning easy money by killing and selling leopards for as little as Rs 2000 each - they cost lakhs of rupees in the international market are being killed by villagers in Uttarakhand for as little as Rs 2,000 each. This has been revealed by a bunch of poachers in the state's Pauri district after they were arrested for killing seven of the big cats - and they got only Rs 14,000.

They were Caught by a forest team after a frantic chase and the villagers admitted that they took this easy way to earn some "easy money". The district police had seized seven leopard skins from four men who were on their way to Kotdwar to pass on the consignment to a middleman and this is considered the biggest-ever seizure in the state. The villagers would skin the animals because there is a great demand for leopard skin in the international market. The network starts right from these villagers and it a major racket.


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Leopards numbers in India down by 80% over last 100 years

#leopard #projecttiger #poachers Leopards in India are becoming a fast vanishing species and a team of researchers have revealed that the count of this animal has gone down by nearly 80% over the last 100 years. This has been reported in timesofindia.indiatimes.com dated 6 April 2015.
Of late, several instances have been reported of human-leopard conflict and it had been presumed that this was happening because of increase in leopard population. This is blamed to the loss of their natural habitats. But, a study conducted by three wildlife scientists over a period of four years has found that the situation is just the opposite.

The study has concluded that leopard population has gone down by a whopping 70-80 per cent over the past 100 years. The study was conducted by reps of the Wildlife Institute of India (WII), the Wildlife Conservation Society, and the National Centre for Biological Sciences (NCBS) – the report has been sent to wildlife journals for review.
Incidentally, Tigers have got protection under the Project Tiger program because of which, poachers are now replacing tiger body parts with those of leopards. Proof of this is the fact that around 4,000 body parts and bones of leopards were recovered in the period 1994-2013 as compared to 1,000 body parts of tigers.

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