An adult female leopard was trapped in a cage set up by the state forest department at a plantation of the Gandrapara tea estate in Banarhat block of Jalpaiguri district on Saturday night.
Sources said for the past one week, terrified residents of the tea garden had been reporting to the management a leopard roaming on the estate. Bishu Das, the garden’s labour welfare officer, managed to click a picture of the leopard. Garden authorities informed the forest department. Accordingly, a trap was laid on Saturday with a live goat as bait by the wildlife squad of Binnaguri.
Around 11.30pm on Saturday, a night guard sensed the leopard’s presence in the cage and informed the manager. He in turn called up foresters.
A team of the wildlife squad led by Subhasish Roy, the range officer, and Sima Choudhury, an honorary wildlife warden, reached Gandrapara and confirmed the leopard was trapped. Around midnight, the animal was sent to the nature interpretation centre in Gorumara National Park. “We will keep it under observation and then release it into the wild,” said a forest officer.
A wild elephant carcass was spotted in Mechpara of Rajganj block in Jalpaiguri on Sunday. A team from Belakoba forest range under Baikunthapur forest division reached the site near a stream to recover the carcass.Range officer Nila Rai said the elephant was around four years old and primary findings suggested it died of illness. Its post-mortem report was awaited, he added.