Leopard dies after getting trapped in snare

A male leopard was found dead in a private property at Manthada near Udhagamandalam town in the Udhagai North Forest Range in the Nilgiris on Monday. Forest department officials suspect that the animal could have died due to getting ensnared in a trap laid to hunt wild game or due to poisoning.

A sniffer dog was pressed into service following the discovery of the carcass of the leopard, which District Forest Officer (Nilgiris division), Bhosale Sachin Thukkaram said showed signs of being trapped in a snare. However, the snare which had possibly killed the leopard was nowhere to be found. This could indicate that the persons responsible could have removed the snare or that the animal could have escaped from where it got trapped and died at the location where it was found, said Assistant Conservator of Forests (Nilgiris division), K. Saravanakumar.

A postmortem was conducted by the Forest Department and samples of the animal’s visceral organs were taken for analysis. A case was also registered under the Wildlife Protection Act, officials said.

Following the investigation, the sniffer dog used by the Forest Department led them to a house nearby where the officials discovered the meat from a Sambar deer carcass. Two women, who were in the house, claimed that they did not hunt the animal, but the Forest Department officials said that they believe that the two incidents could be linked and are continuing their investigations into both incidents.

If the cause of death of the leopard is confirmed to be due to snaring, this would be the eight such incident of a wild animal getting trapped in a snare recorded in the Nilgiris since 2019. Earlier this year, a leopard died after getting trapped in a snare in a tea estate in Coonoor.