VIDEO: Leopard Terrorises Hospital Patients In Indian City Rampage

“This leopard didn’t kill anyone, it was hardly a rampage; it was merely hungry! Humans can’t take away their natural habitat & expect them to just move on! It is humans that are at fault here; by taking away the leopards land etc. Animals go where the food is, they are very territorial, taking away their land involves taking away their food supply, so of course they are going to look elsewhere for food! 

“This poor Leopard must have been scared to death, from the deafening crowd outside…the Forest Rangers or Police should have cord-end off the area & let the Leopard leave the same way it came in! The crowds were ridiculous, so I have no pity for anyone who was harmed…they shouldn’t have been so bloody nosey or so loud! I’m just praying the leopard isn’t caught by locals; if it is, they will surely make it pay, like they have with others they have captured….by burning it to death in a cage or beating it to death!! (As in the picture below) “

By Dean Nelson, New Delhi 2:51PM GMT 24 Feb 2014

As a man-eating tiger preys on villagers in the jungle, a leopard is prowling an Indian city’s streets.

Soldiers, police and wildlife experts were today hunting a leopard which walked into a hospital ward in Meerut, a large city in northern India, and caused panic among staff and patients.

The big cat was first spotted by a timber merchant who saw it emerging from a lavatory in his warehouse and alerted the police on Sunday morning.

Two people in a large crowd which gathered at the site were reported to have been attacked by the leopard after one of them lifted a plank under which it had been hiding.

It was later seen by a caretaker at the Meerut Cantonment Hospital in the heart of the city’s military area where it walked onto a ward where several men were being treated.

Staff at the hospital helped the patients escape the ward and then locked the doors to trap the leopard inside.

It managed to escape and a hunt is now under way to track it down.

“The leopard was last spotted on Monday at around 3:30am on a road near the hospital but since then there have been no sightings. We are keeping a vigil but there is a strong possibility that it has returned to its natural habitat,” said Abhishek Singh, Assistant Superintendent of Police, Meerut.

“It was hit by a tranquilizer dart but we are not sure how effective that was. The animal was scared and was running away from people and in this commotion few people were injured. We were trying to control the crowds from getting near the leopard,” he added.

This poor leopard was beaten to death by villagers!

Ashok Kumar of the Wildlife Trust of India said more leopards are straying into towns because humans are increasingly encroaching on their habitats.

“This is happening very frequently because their habitats are shrinking and they come into human habitation for food and space,” he said. “So one can not say these animals are hunting humans for food, they are merely looking for food because humans took their food source away…if someone gets in their way & makes them feel threatened; one can’t blame the animal, it’s only acting on instinct!!”

Leopard enters Meerut hospital, attacks patients: Video

Published on 24 Feb 2014

High alert has been sounded in Meerut city after a leopard entered a hospital Sunday. A police inspector and media person got injured when they ventured too close to the irritated leopard. The big cat was spotted by a caretaker as it was entering the hospital.

News Link:–http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/asia/india/10658173/Leopard-terrorises-hospital-patients-in-Indian-city-rampage.html

Increasing Cases Of Leopard-Human Conflicts In Western Uttar Pradesh

NOIDA: The rescue of a sub-adult male leopard in a village near Meerut by a team of environmentalists has once again thrown up questions about leopard-human conflict in western Uttar Pradesh.

The districts of western UP are synonymous with sugarcane plantations and the adaptable big cats have utilised these tall crops as habitat where they live and breed. Combined with the increasing pressure on forest habitat in Uttar Pradesh, the once rich leopard population in the state is under constant threat.

The sugarcane plantations in the state are ideal habitat for leopards as they provide cover that allows them to remain unseen. Studies have shown that in many cases farmers and leopards use the same path at approximately the same time without the leopard being detected.

There has however been a gloomy increase in the number of incidents in human-leopard conflict in the state, many of them leading to the leopard being killed. In 2011, a leopard that was found in the sugarcane fields in Bahadurpur area of Ghaziabad and was eventually killed by them before environmentalists could intervene. 

As per a report by the Union ministry of environment report In Uttar Pradesh, as many as 22 persons were killed in wild attacks in 2010-11. Meanwhile, the state’s green cover has been staggering for years, despite all the plantation efforts by forest department. The green cover, in the last five years has gone down from 9.26% to 9.01%. In UP, moderately dense forest (which has 40-70% canopy formation) has gone down from 4,563 sq km to 4,559 sq km.

As per experts, this combined with the massive increase in population in the state has directly led to such cases of conflict. As per guidelines released by MoEFF in 2011 related to dealing with leopard-human conflict – the big cats are not usually inclined to attack people, on the contrary, they avoid people.

In a study, wildlife biologist Vidya Athreya and social scientist Sunetro Ghosal found that in the absence of their usual prey, such leopards that exist on the fringes of rural India – especially in sugarcane plantations – survive on a diet of feral dogs, pigs and livestock. The few wild animals they feed on are mongoose, civet cats and rodents.

While a number of farmers in the area feel proud that the leopard lives alongside them, others aren’t so tolerant. “We are forced live alongside these government-owned predators. They thrive in our farms and harm our livestock, yet we can’t attack and kill them,” said Umar Yadav, a farmer in Bahadurpur. “But some do, in the most horrific mob attacks imaginable”

Department officials require crisis and people management training in order to perform their jobs better. Compensation payments should be made less tedious and bureaucratic; it should be linked to effective protection, so that those who take better care of their livestock are rewarded, and support provided to those who lack the resources to adequately protect their animals,” said an environmentalist.

News Link:-http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/city/noida/Increasing-cases-of-leopard-human-conflicts-in-western-Uttar-Pradesh/articleshow/18152181.cms?