Hyderabad: A five-year-old male leopard that was caught in three wire snares was rescued by officials the city’s Nehru Zoological Park (NZP) in Nalgonda district on Tuesday.
The leopard may not be out of the woods yet. It is reported to have suffered a long cut on its right rear leg from one of the snares. The snare around the neck left a deep impression prompting concern of possible haemorrhage under the skin and possibly its abdomen from where the third snare was removed. “The wounds ha-ve been treated and it was given the required medication. It will be under close observation for 48 hours. Only after that we may be able to say how its condition is,” a zoo official said.
If the animal recovers and is found fit, a decision will be taken on whether or not to release it back in the wild. If the leopard does not recover enough, it may be destined to live the rest of its life in captivity in the zoo. “We suspect it may have come to the spot to drink water from the paddy fields in the area. The location where the leopard was found is just about one-and-a-half km from the Erragan-dlapalli reserve forest block,” Nalgonda divisional forest officer K. Sudhar-shan Reddy said.
The leopard was caught in the traps in Agilapuram tanda of Marriguda village on Tuesday morning.
According to Mr Reddy, the wire snares were set up by farmers to catch wild boars that sometimes raid crops. “As soon as we were informed of the incident by the village sarpanch, we went there and then asked the zoo to send a rescue team,” Mr Reddy said.
According to NZP curator N. Kshitija, the rescue team was led by Dr Asadullah who tranquilised the leopard. “Its condition is static and we hope it will recover from its injuries soon,” she said.
Over the past four months there were two reports of cattle kills by a predator – one near Erragandlapalli and another at Ramreddy-palli. “In both cases, our staff searched for pugmarks or other evidence of a leopard but could not find any,” Mr Reddy said.
