Man-animal conflict on rise in U’khand, leopard kills kid
12 Oct 2013 1:14 AM GMT
Man-animal conflict has been on the rise in Uttarakhand from the last one month. In the last ten days, two incidents were reported in Garhwal region. In a recent case, a six-year-old school going boy was killed by a leopard in a village near Bageshwar district on Thursday evening. Dharam Singh Meena, divisional forest officer (DFO) of Bageshwar district told over phone that a team of forest department is patrolling in the area to search for the killer leopard. A trap has been set for capturing the leopard.
‘A bait in the form of goat inside the trap has been planned to secure the marauding wild cat. Details about this particular animal, like pugmarks, have been taken by the forest department. There are many speculations about such behaviour of the leopard. One, which is ubiquitous, is that the leopards are opportunistic feeders and inside forests there is severe depletion of prey-base. Hence, the leopard has to enter into human settlements for securing its meal, he said.
He further told that now, whenever an animal goes amuck in killing human beings, the Wildlife (Protection) Act, 1972 empowers the chief wildlife warden of every state to declare the animal as man eater and such animal are eliminated.
‘A bait in the form of goat inside the trap has been planned to secure the marauding wild cat. Details about this particular animal, like pugmarks, have been taken by the forest department. There are many speculations about such behaviour of the leopard. One, which is ubiquitous, is that the leopards are opportunistic feeders and inside forests there is severe depletion of prey-base. Hence, the leopard has to enter into human settlements for securing its meal, he said.
He further told that now, whenever an animal goes amuck in killing human beings, the Wildlife (Protection) Act, 1972 empowers the chief wildlife warden of every state to declare the animal as man eater and such animal are eliminated.
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