Pune: Leopard attacks have claimed six lives in Junnar since March this year, but the forest division is awaiting assistance from various departments of state govt. A nine-year-old boy was killed in a leopard attack in front of his grandfather in a soybean field on Wednesday morning at Tejewadi village in Junnar, nearly 94km from the city. This was the sixth human casualty in leopard attacks in the region since March this year.
On 24 July this year, district collector Suhas Diwase had entrusted 13 govt departments with specific tasks to help the forest department mitigate the rising human-leopard conflicts in Junnar. The region is estimated to have at least six to seven leopards in every hundred square kilometres — a density of up to almost 450 leopards in the entire taluka. Diwase had declared 233 villages in the taluka "disaster-prone" because of the increasing number of leopard attacks.
Two months have passed since then, but most of the tasks have not been completed, a forest department official said. Three vehicles were sanctioned, but have not reached the forest department, the official said. "To ensure that Diwane's declaration helps us tackle the problem, we analysed every range in our division and understood the changes that were needed with the involvement of other departments.
Based on our proposal, the district collector entrusted the departments with their tasks. Mitigating the human-leopard conflict is a collective effort, for which we need help from all depart.
