Though the zoo has permission to house only four leopards, it now has eight after another new-born cub died too. Had all the four cubs survived, the count would have been an unmanageable 10.
What is worse, the officials are clueless as to how the female leopard could have conceived when the zoo had no permission for breeding. The male-female pair of leopards - Raja and Rani - were caught in Chandrapur and brought to the zoo for treatment a year and half back after they killed a few people.
Neither did the zoo authorities make any attempt to keep Raja and Rani separately nor did the forest officials take "possession" of them after their treatment was complete. "It made no sense to release the animals in the wild as they had come in touch with humans," said DC Pant, the principal chief conservator of forests. He squarely blamed the zoo autorities. "They should have kept the two leopards in separate enclosures. Rules have been contravened."
Ideally, they should have been released in the wild. Some conservationists feel that it's too late now to release these leopards now but, at the same time, "these animals certainly don't deserve the crumbling space in which they are being kept".
According to forest activist Kundan Hate, "I am surprised how the authorities did not know that the leopard was pregnant. It just goes to show how the zoo is run by the Panjabrao Deshmukh Krishi Vidyapeeth (PDKV)."
A perplexed zoo in-charge Dr SS Bawaskar said, "The female leopard was very aggressive and did not allow the staff to go near her. She was sitting alone in a corner and not ready to leave the cubs. This particular cub was the last of the four and a weak one. Even its umbilical cord was not clean. The position of the cub was such that we are assuming that it may have died from the mother's weight. It may not have been fed."
Bawaskar was not certain if it was Rani that littered. "I am not sure. I have so many leopards here. It's okay if you mention it as Rani," he said, admitting that breeding was not allowed among the wildcats at the zoo. "Rani may have conceived before I took charge of the zoo in August," he added. Leopards have a gestation period of 104 days. "This will only complicate things further," said Bawaskar.
The zoo is ill-equipped to handle such delicate cubs and lacks proper system to take care of wild animals. The vet Dr Abhijit Modghare has no experience of treating wild cubs. With no experts at hand, the future of the two surviving ones too remains bleak.
The incident has once again exposed the apathy of the Akola-headquartered PDKV which manages the historic 100-year-old zoo. The deer population in the zoo has increased manifold due to inbreeding but the zoo has simply turned a blind eye. Though the birth of the cubs may sound like good news, this is not good from a conservation point of view.
In the past, efforts to encourage mating among male leopard Ajay and his partners Riddhi and Samruddhi, brought from Navegaon National Park in 2007, had failed. According to sources, mating between Raja and Rani may have taken place because they are wild-bred.
Sources added that the cats are being served substandard meat. In the recent past, deer are suspected to have died due to haemorrhagic septicaemia, a highly fatal disease caused by bacteria due to multiple reasons. The image of the zoo, which has taken a blow recently due to many reasons, will only be further tarnished with the development.
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