Hyderabad: Not many would welcome the sight of a 13-foot, 400-kg crocodile stranded in their field. Vaman Rao, a farmer from Shahpur village of Manoor mandal in Medak district, however, put his fears aside when he saw the creature stranded in his sugarcane field on Monday morning.
He alerted the Forest department officials and till they arrived, he ensured that the crocodile stayed alive and diverted water from a nearby canal to his sugarcane field.
By afternoon, the Forest department gathered a team of 20 people — 10 department officials and 10 locals — to nab the crocodile.
A cloth was thrown over its face and its powerful jaws were tied. The reptile was then transported back to the Manjira Wildlife Sanctuary from where it had strayed.
While this was one of the largest crocodiles captured till now from fields, such man-animal conflicts are not rare near Manjira. The sanctuary has a bustling population of crocodiles, more than 300, which exceeds the sanctuary’s carrying capacity.
Whenever the reservoir gets flooded, crocodiles enter the fields close to the shore. A Forest department official said that his happens even when water levels go down in summer resulting in a dearth of food availability, forcing crocodiles to get out in search of food.
A wildlife conservationist from Hyderabad said, “Crocodiles, like many other species, are territorial animals. If a particular portion of river goes dry, the crocodile living there cannot just venture into another crocodile's territory. It has to search for a new location and sometimes they end up in flooded fields.”
