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Foresters track and trap leopard

Sunday 10 March 20130 comments

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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