Three leopard cubs were reunited with their mother, four days after they were discovered by locals in a sugarcane field near Nashik.
Locals from Brahmanwada village in Niphad had come face-to-face with leopards on previous occasions while harvesting their sugarcane. When the cubs were spotted on November 8 by a local farmer, he immediately alerted the forest department.
However, as the news spread, locals demanded that the mother be trapped and removed from the village. Forest department officials thought otherwise, and began their hunt to reunite the cubs and the mother, as they felt that the adult leopard in the search for her children, may end up attacking humans.
The forest officials made four unsuccessful attempts in reuniting the cubs with the mother, and eventually contacted senior veterinarian Dr Ajay Deshmukh from Manikdoh Leopard Rescue Centre, which is run by the NGO Wildlife SOS. Deshmukh has successfully reunited several cubs with their mothers.
“We travelled 150 km from Junnar on November 12 and reached the site. First, we had to pacify the locals by telling them that trapping the leopard would aggravate the problem. We told them that reuniting the mother with the cubs was crucial, and fortunately they agreed,” said Deshmukh.
According to Deshmukh just like the domestic cats, leopards only search for their cubs at the site where they leave them. “We immediately called the person who had found the cubs and after some discussion we located the place where he had found the cubs, which was around 100 meters away from where the forest department team was leaving the cubs. We kept the cubs and covered them with a perforated plastic basket on the night of November 12 and after several hours of wait the mother walked in and removed the basket and took them away,” said Deshmukh adding that they had placed camera traps to capture the reunion.
“We would like to ensure that leopard cubs that get separated from their mothers don’t end up in captivity if we can help it. We want them living freely in their natural habitat and hence our teams makes every effort to make such rescue and reunion operations possible," shared Kartick Satyanarayan, Co-founder, Wildlife SOS.
Watch the emotional reunion here
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