BUA BHATT
Jalpaiguri
March 10: A fully
grown male leopard, which was on the prowl in the Bagrakote tea estate located
at Oodlabari in the Malbazar subdivision of Dooars, was finally caged on Sunday
morning. The big cat fell into a trap laid by the forest department and got
locked up.
The
forest department had laid the trap in the Bagrakote tea estate following
consistent reports from the garden workers. On Sunday morning, when few garden
labourers were heading to go to a local market, they found that the leopard was
caged. Foresters later took
the beast to Gorumara where it will be treated first and then released in the
forest.
More
than eighty five leopards have been rescued from North
Bengal over the past five years and in most of the cases the
animals, which is covered as a
co-predator under the tiger conservation programme, were rescued from tea
gardens.
The
garden bushes provide natural cover for these animals which often treat the
drains of the gardens as their hiding place especially when the females are
about to give birth to their cubs. The heap of leaves in the drains act as
natural cushion for the big cats and this attracts the animals to the gardens.
This is
generally experienced every year during the winters when there is no tea
production and most of the time in a day the gardens stay calm, away from the
regular hullaballoo. This is the time of the year when female leopards give
birth to their offspring. And the female’s partner often drops in to check
things out.
In many
cases the presence of leopards in tea gardens result in man-animal conflict
following which leopards often get killed. While living in the garden, leopards
often lift goats, pigs and other small animals that the garden labourers and
villagers keep as their livestock and it is important for these people to drive
away or kill the leopards to save their animals.
This
conflict results in the death of five-six leopards and one-two human beings,
children to be precise, every year.
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