Coimbatore: Forest officers installed four camera traps at Kembanur village near Thondamuthur here on Thursday evening after a leopard killed a calf in an agriculture field in the locality in the early hours of the day. According to one of the officers, the calf was being reared by Vivek, a local farmer. “He has a cattle shed in the agricultural field to keep the cows and calves that he is rearing.
The farmland is located just a kilometre away from the forest boundary.” On Wednesday night, the officer said, Vivek tied the cows and calves to the poles in the cattle shed and left for his house. “When he returned to the shed in the early hours of Thursday, he found that one of the calves was attacked and killed by a wild animal .
The calf’s internal organs were pulled out by the wild animal. There was also a bite mark on the neck of the calf.” Vivek immediately alerted the forest department.
A team of forest field staff led by range officer Thirumurugan subsequently inspected the spot and came across the pug marks of a leopard. Meanwhile, a group of farmers rounded up the forest officers and demanded them that they take speedy action to curb such incidents in future. They said the wild elephants were often straying out of the reserve forest and damaging their crops.
Vivek also told the officers that his crops were damaged in a raid by wild elephants on Wednesday night. The farmers also urged the forest department to place a cage and capture the carnivore. The forest department then brought a cage to the farmland in the evening and installed four camera traps to check the movements of the leopard.
“After getting permission from the chief wildlife warden, the cage will be placed with a bait to capture the carnivore,” the officer said. In another instance, forest officers have sent a proposal to install a wire rope fence for a stretch of 11km from Attukal to Marudhamalai to prevent elephants and other wild animals from straying into the forest fringes. “We have sought Rs65 lakh to implement the project successfully,” another forest officer told TOI.
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