Three Leopard Cubs Found In A Pune Sugarcane Field Reunited With Their Mother

Leopards straying into human settlements and fields are not uncommon in states like Maharashtra and Uttar Pradesh, especially in the sugarcane plantations.

The leopards often stray into the peripheries of the forests in search of easy prey like dogs and cattle.

But such incidents bring them into increasing conflicts with humans.

Maharashtra sees an increase in such cases, during this time of the year when the sugarcane is harvested.

BCCL

This is also the breeding season of these big cats and female leopards rely heavily on the tall crop to shield their offspring from predators and human intervention.

"Such encounters are reported more frequently during the pre-harvest and harvest seasons. The sugarcane fields provide a suitable shelter for the leopards to breed in and to nurture their cubs," Yogesh Ghodake, Range Forest Officer, Otur, said.

Wildlife SOS

What happened?

On Sunday, sugarcane farmers in Vadgaon Kandali village located in Otur forest range, in Maharashtra stumbled upon three tiny leopard cubs while harvesting their crops.

After being alerted by the farmer, a team of NGO Wildlife SOS and the Maharashtra Forest Department reached the spot and identified them as one female and two males, estimated to be about 8-weeks-old.

Wildlife SOS

The team then arranged for the cubs to be reunited with their mother and went back to the field where they were found. As the team stood close-by and hidden expecting a long time before the leopard mother would find her cubs, the waiting time was cut-short as within 30 minutes, a leopardess emerged from the sugarcane field.

After gently knocking off the cover from the safe box, she picked up her cubs one after the other by the scruff of the neck and relocated to a safer area.

Wildlife SOS

"It is reassuring to see that instead of harming the helpless cubs, the farmers reached out to the rescue teams for help. Our team of experts has years of experience on their hands and we¡¯ve found that minimizing the time of separation between cubs and mothers is an important contributing factor for a successful reunion,¡± Kartick Satyanarayan, Co-founder and CEO of Wildlife SOS, said.

However, not all such incidents have a happy ending.

There have been several cases where leopard cubs were killed deliberately or by accident by farmers.

In April 2019, five leopard cubs were burned alive in Pune after farmers set fire to a sugarcane farm.

Farm laborers had set fire to crop residual after one of them allegedly spotted a Russell's viper snake while cutting the sugarcane.

Only after the fire subsided, they spotted the charred bodies of the cubs, three females and two males, which were just around ten days old.