Delhi forest dept officials to be trained in leopard rescue ops

The forest and wildlife department of the Delhi government is planning to send more than 40 officials to the Sanjay Gandhi National Park in Mumbai where they will receive training on how to tackle a leopard if spotted in an urban area. After a series of on-ground trainings and workshops, the forest staff will carry out awareness drives among the local residents in Delhi, where leopards have been recently sighted, particularly in all the human settlements around the Asola Bhatti Wildlife Sanctuary in the Capital, the department said on Wednesday. A senior forest department said the plan is to train teams that will be equipped to handle human-leopard conflicts, and sensitise the local residents. The department said that two workshops have already been held by the NGO on Monday and Tuesday in Delhi, with expert members from WCS-India, including leopard expert Vidya Athreya and former principal chief conservator of forests from Maharashtra Sunil Limaye, interacting with forest officials and explaining the Mumbai model. We also did brainstorming with the forest department and looked at the problems they faced during the rescue operations in Delhi in the last few months,” said Nikit Surve, wildlife biologist, human wildlife interaction programme at WCS-India, who was also part of the workshops, held at the Delhi Secretariat and Asola Bhatti Wildlife Sanctuary respectively.