NAGPUR: The Chorbahuli incident has once again highlighted the dire need for a rescue and treatment centre for wild animals in the city.
In the past four years, over a dozen carnivores including injured leopards and tigers have been brought to the city for treatment from the forest areas. However, due to lack of a rescue centre, wildlife has been suffering.
The four-month-old cub is being treated in a makeshift enclosure in the forest department's nursery at Seminary Hills. The enclosure, which is like a collapsible shamiana, itself had been hurriedly put up on April 26 after another tiger was brought for treatment from Palasgoan outside Tadoba Tiger Reserve in Chandrapur district. It was found caught in a trap laid by poachers near a waterhole. While one wildcat died in this incident a third one managed to escape.
Both, the Palasgaon tiger and the Chorbahuli female cub have been placed in separate cages but in the same shamiana.
A proposal for a rescue centre in Gorewada has been pending with the Central Zoo Authority(CZA) for two years but no serious efforts have been made by the state government to get it through.
Gorewada is a suitable location as it centrally located from all national parks and wildlife sanctuaries in Vidarbha and rescued or trapped animal can be shifted in 5 hours at the proposed centre.
Gorewada is well connected by roads. Besides, the city has good team of wildlife vets with the Maharashtra Animal Husbandry and Fisheries University (MAFSU).
The centre can help treat all seized, rescued, sick or injured animals and will subsequently ensure their release. The centre will also be helpful to carry out study and scientific research on behaviour of the rescued animals.
"With excessive cattle and human population and urbanization being main reasons for conflicts between humans and wild animals, cases of straying tigers and panthers will increase in future," said conservationist Kishor Rithe.
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