Chamarajanagar: Snares installed to catch menacing wild boars and prevent them from raiding crops are proving dangerous for the big cats with forest officials rescuing the second leopard in three days which was trapped in a snare in an agricultural field in HD Kote taluk of Mysuru district.
The seven-year-old male leopard struggled to free itself from the trap for about six hours before forest officials eventually freed it at Battanooru village on the periphery of Bandipur National Park on Tuesday.
The snare was installed in the fields where farmers grow cotton and tobacco and had constricted the abdomen area of the leopard. The animal was darted by veterinarians and was later kept under observation to detect injuries. It was freed in N. Begur range, Assistant Conservator of Forests Paramesh told Deccan Chronicle. The snares normally catch the animal around its neck but the leopard got trapped in the abdominal area.
In another incident a couple of days back, forest officials had saved a female leopard at a cotton field near Bellathanuru about eight kms from HD Kote. The leopard had accidentally got caught in a snare at a cotton field and the struggling animal was noticed by RFO Madhusudan who alerted DCF Hanumanthappa. Veterinarians, Nagaraj and Akram arrived at the spot to tranquilise it.
The leopard was aggressive and Akram darted the animal. Mr Hanumanthappa said that the rescued leopard was released in Kalkere range of Bandipur. He too suspects that farmers installed the snare for wild boars but a leopard on the prowl got caught in it.
