NEWSLINK: Uttar Pradesh Government to Open Five Leopard Rescue Centres to Curb Leopard-Human Conflict

The Uttar Pradesh state government has initiated a 'Project Leopard' to deal with the growing population of the big cat and the increasing incidents of man-animal conflict within the state.


According to official sources, the Yogi Adityanath government has decided to set up five leopard rescue centres in Meerut, Pilibhit, Chitrakoot, Etawah, and Gorakhpur. The first of these five rescue centres will be opened in the Etawah Lion Safari, and permission for the same has already been obtained by the Central Zoo Authority.

A forest official involved in preparing the blueprint for the project said: "Whenever a leopard is caught, there is a problem of keeping it in a safe place. The zoos in Lucknow and Kanpur are already overcrowded and we have no choice but to release the big cat in the forest from where it invariably comes back to the villages to hunt."

The leopard population in Uttar Pradesh, according to the 2018 census, stood at 415. But wildlife experts now claim that the population may have crossed the 600 mark.

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