Kathmandu, October 24
The Division Forest Office, Kathmandu, has successfully captured a leopard in a trap set near Alo Gumba in Nagarjun Municipality.
The leopard was caught after the Ward No. 5 office reported that the animal had been entering residential areas and causing distress. In response, a team from the forest office set up a trap to capture the leopard.
“We set the trap about 10 days ago,” said Dr Ashutosh Bhatt, a veterinarian with the Division Forest Office, Kathmandu. “This morning, a leopard was caught in the trap.”
To lure the leopard, the team used three local chickens as bait. Upon receiving information around 6 a.m. that the leopard had been trapped, a team led by Forest Officer Shankar Thapa, veterinarian Dr. Ashutosh Bhatt, Armed Forest Guard Ram Chandra Sapkota, and staff member Bhairav Bhatt reached the site. They transferred the leopard from the trap to a cage and transported it to the Forest Office in Hattisar.
Dr Bhatt mentioned that the leopard will soon be released into a suitable habitat with dense forest cover. “We will likely release it in a national park,” he added.
In recent years, leopards have increasingly entered residential areas in Kathmandu, occasionally attacking people. As the frequency of such incidents grows, residents have turned to the forest office for help.
However, Dr Bhatt pointed out that the forest office has a limited number of traps, which makes it difficult to respond to all such incidents.
Last year, in the month of November, the Division Forest Office, Kathmandu, captured a leopard found in Kaushaltar, Bhaktapur. However, their attempt to capture another leopard found in Kirtipur in August of that same year was unsuccessful.
