GREATER NOIDA: The forest office of Gautam Budh Nagar, along with CISF officials, launched a night-long combing operation on Wednesday to help locate a leopard in the NTPC Dadri complex.
An adult leopard was sighted in the area in the afternoon. While pugmarks were seen, the animal was not spotted by officers of the forest department who rushed to the power plant complex at 3pm. The NTPC Dadri complex is spread over 500 acres, of which 300 acres is under forest cover.
At the time of filing of this report, the combing operation was still on.
“We have been witnessing the death of street dogs. Usually, leopards first attack dogs when they enter human settlement because they are the first line of defence for humans. They do not eat the dogs but just kill them,” said Kaveri Rana Bhardwaj, an animal rescue specialist with PFA, Greater Noida.
She fears that a family of leopards has strayed from their natural habitat and now live in the forest areas of the city. “Our forest department is not equipped to tackle the crisis,” she added.
Bharadwaj explained that wild animals are encroaching the urban areas because either their habitats are filled with water or rampant deforestation has robbed them of their food.
According to Greater Noida’s wing of People for Animals (PFA), wildcat sighting has been reported two weeks ago in the Sector Xu of Greater Noida as well.
“An old woman living right behind our house was attacked recently by a wild animal. While nobody could ascertain what the animal was, we have pugmarks to show it was a wild creature and could be a leopard,” Sarika Sharma a resident of Sector Xu said.
The Dadri and Sikandrabad forest range cover about 16% of Gautam Budh Nagar’s land area. Environment workers in Greater Noida have warned that there could be increased incidents of animals entering human settlement if the green cover is not increased.
“Because the animals are increasingly getting displaced with development activities, we need the forest department to be well-equipped to handle future encroachments,” Bhardwaj said.
“We have now created two search parties. If we manage to rescue the leopard, we will take it to the upper hills of Uttarakhand and release it,” PK Srivastava, the district forest officer of Gautam Budh Nagar told TOI.
An adult leopard was sighted in the area in the afternoon. While pugmarks were seen, the animal was not spotted by officers of the forest department who rushed to the power plant complex at 3pm. The NTPC Dadri complex is spread over 500 acres, of which 300 acres is under forest cover.
At the time of filing of this report, the combing operation was still on.
“We have been witnessing the death of street dogs. Usually, leopards first attack dogs when they enter human settlement because they are the first line of defence for humans. They do not eat the dogs but just kill them,” said Kaveri Rana Bhardwaj, an animal rescue specialist with PFA, Greater Noida.
She fears that a family of leopards has strayed from their natural habitat and now live in the forest areas of the city. “Our forest department is not equipped to tackle the crisis,” she added.
Bharadwaj explained that wild animals are encroaching the urban areas because either their habitats are filled with water or rampant deforestation has robbed them of their food.
According to Greater Noida’s wing of People for Animals (PFA), wildcat sighting has been reported two weeks ago in the Sector Xu of Greater Noida as well.
“An old woman living right behind our house was attacked recently by a wild animal. While nobody could ascertain what the animal was, we have pugmarks to show it was a wild creature and could be a leopard,” Sarika Sharma a resident of Sector Xu said.
The Dadri and Sikandrabad forest range cover about 16% of Gautam Budh Nagar’s land area. Environment workers in Greater Noida have warned that there could be increased incidents of animals entering human settlement if the green cover is not increased.
“Because the animals are increasingly getting displaced with development activities, we need the forest department to be well-equipped to handle future encroachments,” Bhardwaj said.
“We have now created two search parties. If we manage to rescue the leopard, we will take it to the upper hills of Uttarakhand and release it,” PK Srivastava, the district forest officer of Gautam Budh Nagar told TOI.
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