As rosette pattern on the caught spotted cat fails to match with any other from the national park, wildlife experts say a camera-trapping exercise is the need of the hour for building a databank of leopards roaming across the landscape
The leopard was rescued and taken to the SGNP. File Pic
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As everyone wonders where the leopard that entered Nane Pada in Mulund came from, considering the spot is 3 km from the Sanjay Gandhi National Park (SGNP), even researchers are confused, since the rosette pattern on the rescued male big cat does not match any leopards' images from the Park. Wildlife experts say this underlines the need for a camera-trapping exercise outside the SGNP to create a databank of leopards.
No match found
An official from the forest department told mid-day that biologist Nikit Surve, from the Wildlife Conservation Society, India Programme, who has been researching leopards in the SGNP for more than three years now, tried to match the rosette pattern on him with an image databank. "We have a databank of more than 50 SGNP leopards from the years 2011, 2015 and 2017, and I compared the rosette pattern on the leopard that was rescued with those, but it has not matched with any of the images," said Surve.
Forest department officials from Thane and SGNP, the police, Honorary Wildlife Warden Pawan Sharma, Sunish Subramanian Kunju, volunteers, and the Veterinary Officer at SGNP, Dr Shailesh Pethe, had rescued the male leopard, which is at the Leopard Rescue Centre at SGNP. Unconfirmed sources had said that prior to the day the leopard entered Nane Pada in Mulund East and injured five people on Saturday, a motorist claimed to have spotted one near the Eastern Express Highway between Nahur and Mulund.
'Camera-trapping needed'
Mayur Kamath, honorary wildlife warden of Mumbai Suburbs, said, "There is an extensive need to do a camera-trapping exercise outside the protected area of SGNP and Thane Territorial Division, including Murbad, Dahanu and Palghar throughout the year, so that the department has a databank of the leopards that roam across the landscape. I would also like to appeal to people to immediately inform the forest department in case they spot a leopard outside the SGNP's limits."
05 No. of people the leopard injured in Mulund East
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