Leopard cub reunited with its mother in Katarniaghat Wildlife Sanctuary
Katarniaghat, 19th April, 2023: A stray leopard cub was found by villagers around 8 am when harvesting sugarcane in Kundwa village under Mihin Purwa block of Bahraich on the 18th of April, 2023. Connected to the Katarniaghat Wildlife Sanctuary at a distance of around 2 km, it wasn’t an unusual surprise for Rajesh who stumbled upon the cub in his farm.
Leopard cub brought by villagers at FD office | Photograph by Uttar Pradesh FD
The cub immediately brought to Motipur Range office to be handed over to the forest department. RFO, Mr. Mahendra Maurya called in WTI’s Rapid Response Team (RRT) unit based in Katarniaghat to handle the operation. RRT biologist, Ali Jibran found out the cub to be between 1.5 and 2 months old. Dr. Deepak Verma, field veterinarian of Katarniaghat WLS was informed of the same and he declared the cub to be healthy and fit to be sent back to the wild. The team along with the forest staff immediately took the cub to the location where it was found to attempt a reunion.
The entire sugarcane field was cordoned off using caution tapes to keep people away from the site and camera traps were installed all around the field to capture the moment of mother leopard. The camera trap recorded the mother leopard at 12 pm in the night to take away her cub. “We got an incredible amount support from the villagers who wanted the cub to return back to the wild. This only goes on to show the success of our conservation awareness drives and how communities are an integral park when it comes to human-wildlife conflict mitigation”, says Ali.
WTI’s RRT team facilitating the reunion attempt | Photograph by Ali Jabran/WTI
Mr. Ali had assisted in similar re-union of leopard cubs in Gola range recently, on the 9thApril 23. Along with the RFO, Mr. Sanjeev Tiwari and his team, two cubs were spotted inside an Agriculture College while harvesting wheat. Both the cubs were safely re-united with the mother.
This has been the third successful reunion of cubs with their mothers in the Terai landscape under WTI’s Terai Tiger Project which is supported by the the Uttar Pradesh Forest Department, Chester Zoo and the US Fish and Wildlife Services. The project, initiated in 2008, along with the village volunteers network of Primary Response Teams (PRT) has been working in the landscape to mitigate human wildlife conflict and sensitise people to bring about behavioural changes to reduce the human large carnivore conflict.
