A 5-year-old male leopard which created mayhem in the city’s Electronic City’s area for the past one week was caught by the state forest department in the wee hours on Wednesday.
Leopard Task Force and Forest officials closely monitored this big cat's movement for the last three days. The leopard was sighted crossing Hosur Road near the Electronics City toll plaza. It was first spotted on September 17th while crossing a flyover near a toll Plaza in Electronics City which is about 16 km. from its suspected home in Bannerghatta National Park. Later the officials rescued the leopard during the post-midnight operation at the Centre for Development of Telematics (C-DoT) and ITI campus in the first phase of Electronics City. Despite setting up camera traps to record leopard movement, the leopard remained elusive for two days.
Forest officials meticulously studied its movement and used drone cameras with thermal imaging that can detect heat signatures to track the leopard. On September 21st thermal drones recorded its movements. To rescue the leopard, they set up two cages with baits like chicken, beef, dog, sheep and goat. V. Ganesh ACF (South) Bengaluru Urban said that the leopard evaded the cages cleverly, kept roaming the campus and refused to walk into the trap. It was a tough challenge to understand, he added. Two teams comprising 35 forest officials initially used 5/3 feet three normal cages, two thermal drones and 15 camera traps to capture the leopard.
Under high pressure, the officials were worried about capturing the leopard as Union Minister for Communications Jyotiraditya Scindia is visiting the C-DoT campus for a program on Thursday here.
Ganesh added that the leopard consumed the bait, i.e., a dog, and was hiding underneath the bushes near the helipad of helitaxi services on the ITI campus. Later, on September 22nd the Tumakuru cage was specially brought from the Kanakpura division which eventually helped to catch the leopard.
N. Ravindra Kumar, DCF, Bengaluru Urban said that the Tumakuru cage is a 10/10 feet large enclosure that doesn’t look like a cage. With leaves, branches and set up between bushes and creepers it appears like a natural habitat and animals fail to notice it.
RFID-enabled rice grain-sized microchip was implanted using an electronic syringe in the tail part to track the leopard in the future. The chip has a 15-digit number containing information about the leopard’s last capture. If it is captured again the chip will provide data on its previous movements.
The leopard was later tranquilized and will be taken to Mysuru for release into Bandipur National Park where it would be radio-collared and released back into the wild.