PILIBHIT: The apathy of forest department has endangered the lives of five leopard cubs kept by the mother big cat in a small sugarcane field in village Nizampur under Seramau North police station of Pilibhit where a 25-year-old youth had been mauled by a leopard while harvesting sugarcane two days ago.
The cubs are too small to be able to walk properly. As per the chief conservator of forest (CCF) of Bareilly zone, Lalit Verma, the cubs are guessed to be aged below one month. Ironically, the safety of the infants has been put to stake by the inquisitive villagers who are lifting the cubs in their hand to see them closely. The cubs are feared to be killed by stray dogs and jackals.
The forest officials including the divisional forest officer of Shahjahanpur, Adarsh Kumar, had claimed two days ago to have ensured round the clock monitoring of the leopard in question by deploying the field forest force on the spot but the precarious activities of locals are apparently implying a big flaw in the safety and monitoring measures.
On being asked about it, the CCF, Verma, said that “I am issuing immediate orders to encircle the spot concerned with the green net in order to prevent any possible access of villagers or the carnivores like stray dogs and jackals up to the little cubs. The fullest safety of the cubs will be ensured on the top priority”. Over a question of shifting the cubs along with the mother big cat safely to the nearby forest region of Pilibhit tiger reserve by applying human efforts, Verma said that “we will wait for two to three days to let the mother leopard shift the cubs to the jungle in a natural way."
All possible options to save the cubs would be applied at ground zero as the farmers would not wait any more now to harvest the sugarcane crop as the sugar mills were likely to announce the end of their crushing session very soon, he added. The mother leopard was moving from one agricultural field to another but was not inclined to move along with the cubs to the forest region. Any decision regarding translocating the mother leopard by its caging would be considered if the nature born characteristics of the mother big cat to shift the cubs to safer place did not produce the desired outcome, said Adarsh Kumar, the DFO.
The forest staff had also been directed to spray water around the spot of cubs’ hiding with a view to keep it cool.
