Wildlife crimes: Leopard poisoned, buried secretly in Abbottabad
A villager in the Galiyat area of Abbottabad poisoned and secretly buried a leopard, authorities discovered on Wednesday.
After killing the leopard, the villager buried the animal but “the foul smell of the dead animal” led locals and officials of the wildlife department to investigate the killing.
Authorities have ordered a probe into the killing of the leopard, sources in the area revealed.
According to locals of the area, the leopard had been constantly attacking the cattle heads of the villagers in the Boji Kakul forest area due to which one of the villagers got infuriated and decided to put the animal to rest.
The leopard, according to Wildlife authorities, was poisoned with meat, which killed it about a week ago.
The accused, however, buried the animal secretly without bringing the matter to the notice of authorities.
Some of the villagers reported the matter to the wildlife department when they sensed the stench and dug the solid waste dump to find the charred body of the leopard.
Wildlife officials confirmed the killing of a local species of leopard and launched an investigation to fix responsibility since killing wildlife is a crime under existing laws.
Galiyat area of Abbottabad has over 40 pairs of the local species of leopards.
Published in The Express Tribune, November 8th, 2012.
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Even if he would have reported it to the wildlife department, he was not going to be compensated for the los of cattle. Nor were the leopards to be removed. In past these leopards have also been known to attack and kill or in some instances, seriously injure locals in the area. It is an unfortunate incident but at the same time it is similar to us killing a venomous snake inside our garden.
When unchecked population growth kills of the natural prey of carnivora, they will resort to preying on whatever they can find. In this case, its the unfortunate man's cattle. There is no easy fix for this apart from declaring large areas as national parks and stopping cattle farming/grazing in and around those areas. Of course the park will need to be stocked with animals that are the natural food for leopards i.e. deer, monkeys.
Perhaps the government can take lessons from countries like Kenya and South Africa on how to manage the natural flora and fauna through eco-tourism. If people can see that they can earn a living out of these animals they will stop killing them and diversify off of cattle farming.
BTW, photo is of snow leopard not a common leopard.
such a pity. it is such a beautiful animal. i hope we can keep it in the wild for our future generations to see.
well he should have reported it to "wildlife department" (if there is any) ; and it actually is their responsibility to make sure its away from the privately owned cattle area. I mean what else one expected from a farmer, who's main source of income were those cattle.
im the first person to read this.
In Pakistan we take laws in our own hand.poor animal.not his fault to be in a county of mad
Double check the spelling of Abbottabad - in the intro, it's spelled differently at the beginning with one "T" missing.