Heartbreaking news from India
 

It was just pointed out to me that a leopardess with 3 very young cubs (8-10 days old) were found in sugarcane fields in the vicinity of a village around 200km NE of Bombay.

The villagers called in the Forestry Department who managed to capture the cubs and used them to lure the mother into a cage. The captured and caged the mother was being transported seperately from the cubs for transit to be released elsewhere. Unfortunately, the heat, hunger and the fact that cubs in a cage trying deperately to get to their mother in a neighbouring cage and getting hurt in the process all resulted in the death of the little ones. Wonder why they werent kept together.

Something needs to be done to better manage this situation which is starting to become a regular occurence.

Link to some pictures - http://www.esakal.com/features/16apr...pard/index.htm

It is heartbreaking and quite disturbing.

I will never understand why some people treat animals like they were expendable.

Do you happen to have a link to the story?

based on the information provided its absolutely insane how they handled the situation.

forestry dep was quite not the right addressee but they could have it forwarded to a kind of wildlife service.

cannot comprehend how people completely untrained try to do "something"........

This is very, very sad and seems so unnecessary.

I have a link, but its in an Indian language and script, so not much use I am afraid unless one knows how to read that script and knows the language.

not particular the incident described - but nonetheless very disturbing:

10 leopards killed in 15 days
18 Jan 2007, 0115 hrs IST,Avijit Ghosh ,TNN
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NEW DELHI: Ten leopards were killed across India in 15 days. Experts say that the pan-India killings indicate both a rise in poaching as well as escalation in human-animal conflict.

And a north Bengal-based wildlife activist also points
toward a growing leopard cub trade.

Wildlife Protection Society of India records show that between December 20, 2006 and the first week of January 2007, at least 10 leopards were killed.

That apart, three persons were arrested by the police in the Indo-Bhutan border town of Jaigaon in north Bengal on January 10.

They were carrying skins of three leopards and two fishing cats. One of the accused comes from Nepal. Interrogations revealed the trio had bought the skins from Bhutan traders.

A Siliguri-based wildlife activist says that leopard cub trade is rampant in the tea gardens of north Bengal. "Leopards usually breed in the tea gardens.

The labourers catch and sell the cubs across the border in Nepal or Bhutan. A cub fetches anything between Rs 5,000 to Rs 20,000," he says.

He also says that 22 leopard skins were recovered in the same Duars region in 2006. On July 14, wildlife trader Ratiram Sharma was arrested with four leopard skins, 11 kg tiger bones and skulls and 16 kg rhino skins.

A few days later, on July 25, his son Ashok Sharma was arrested with one tiger skin and three leopard skins. Leopards are numerous in the north Bengal forests. No census figure is available of their numbers.

The leopards were snared in iron traps by poachers.

http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/search.cms

more than 1000 articles on leopard incidents in india.

Correct me if I am wrong, but is this not a human animal conflict? There are 1.1 billion people there. That's a lot of people. And forget greed for the moment. It merely makes a bad situation worse.

bearable

you are perfectly right! human-wildlife conflict - and it comes down to human failure and lack of education or simply denial animals right for space!

Amol,

I'm afraid it's just another example of the continued downward spiral over here, as you know.
Saw the news clip - but, of late it occurs to me that the news stations are trying to sensationalize it just to fill up their air time and they don't really deal with the underlying issues ........

Very sad indeed.

Spot on Hari. I was sad to note that not one national daily covered it. Just a couple of regional language dailies.

Have we become so insensitive that 10 day old cubs dont matter!!

Amol,

In our local newspaper, "The Hindu" has almost a weekly news brief about Leopards being trapped and sent to zoos in and around Tamil Nadu, but, mostly closer to where we are over here! The odd story about the Leopards being poisoned and the farmer going missing etc etc., the usual stuff, you know how it goes.

But, ofcourse right now in the midst of summer - almost daily stories of how the elephants are straying well outside their core area in the need to find water. Elephant population seems to be very good right now, but, sadly loss of habitat.

Btw, saw about 20 plus peacocks yesterday about an hour from here!

Sorry to see, unfortunately human-wildlife conflict is one issue we all seem to have in common.

On Monday a cougar (mountain lion) was shot dead in Chicago.
http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/l...,5227121.story

This was definitely a tough one safety wise and of course police do not have tranquilizer guns but it was actually spotted and reported to Animal Control in the morning so it seems there could have been a better coordination and effort to try and dart it. I'll be a bit surprised if this was a wild cougar as the behaviour does not seem right. I would guess it most likely was captive at one time, shocking numbers of big cats are actually kept as pets, at least until they get too big anyway but I'm not sure they will be able to prove it one way or another.

thanks PB for sharing the information!

reminds me of the incident in germany 2 years ago when a single migrant brown bear (from italy) was shot dead because that individual fed on chicken!
since then i am not at all anymore a WWF supporter because WWF backed the killing!
seems that humans consider themselves superior doesn't matter how vital the impact is on other species.
very devastating...

These stories about animals in wrong place/ doing wrong thing etc. then being killed are all sad. When, about 20 years age, I finally realized the saddest thing about animals,i.e. how horribly they lived and died to become our dinner,is when I became a vegetarian.

As a species, we seem determined to prove Malthus right either by overpopulation or overconsumption.

Hmmm

I just saw the news short while ago, apparently the olympic torch passed thru New Delhi today amidst heavy security ..... Free Tibet etc etc etc., did you know - more Tibetian refugees in India. I just learnt of this, and we need more space .......

I wonder why they gave Beijing the olympics in the first place? Everything is a song and a dance now.

KRNS
welcome to the club! the same with us:
MCD and animal transportation criss crossing europe for greedyness was the reason to skip eating meat!
we didn't want to contribute to that torture

hariS
they gave the olympics for one simply reason - as always: money!
e.g. the german guy t.bach, member of the commitee is a board memeber of a german company which does a lot of business with china, means chinese government allows that company to exploit chinese workforce and poisen chinese waters. and of course that guy supportat that sick idea of given the olympics to china! otherwise the chinese would have caused some trouble to that company!

Don't forget a lot of animal parts are going to China as a cure for everything