Forest dept helps reunite leopard cub, mom

Aurangabad: The Aurangabad forest department on Sunday reunited a newborn leopard cub and its mother. The big cats had strayed into a sugar cane farm in the Kannad taluka.

The incident occured at Mauje Jawali village, where two cubs were spotted in a sugar cane farm on Sunday. Subsequently, the forest department was alerted. Upon reaching the spot, authorities found only one cub. Another had already been shifted to a safe place by the female leopard.

Forest guard M A Shaikh said, “The two-week-old cub that was left behind was found in distress. We fed it, but it couldn’t have survived without the mother,” he said.

Later, the forest department placed the cub in a cushioned container in the same sugar cane farm. The locals were requested not to visit the spot till further orders.

“We were sure that the female leopard will revisit the farm in search of her cub. In order to keep a close watch, cameras were installed around the spot. As expected, the mother came to the farm on Sunday night and took the second cub. Everything was captured by the cameras,” Shaikh said.

A forest department team, including assistant conservator S U Shinde, range forest officers Annasaheb Pehrekar, Anand Gayake and C M Mahajan among others reached the spot on Monday morning to collect cameras and confirm the reunion of the mother leopard with her cub.

Honorary wildlife warden Kishor Pathak said sugar cane farms are perceived as safe breeding spots by leopards. “The sugar cane farms are dense and there is little or no movement of humans till the harvest time. These farms are irrigated regularly, offering apt temperature conditions for leopards to breed,” he said.

Leopards are protected under Wildlife Protection Act, 1972, and killing them is an offence.