Forest department deploys thermal camera, drone to trap leopard

The forest department officials have changed their strategy to trace the leopard in T Narasipura taluk of Mysuru district on Wednesday as the special operation to locate the leopard, which began five days back, did not yield any result.

The leopard had killed 22-year-old Meghana at S Kebbehundi village in T Narasipura on the night of December 1.

Additional Principal Chief Conservator of Forest Kumar Pushkar arrived at the operation site with a drone with a high-resolution, high-quality thermal camera for the operation on Wednesday afternoon.

With the new drone, the special teams have decided to intensify their operation around Mallikarjunaswamy Hill where the leopard was sighted twice, including once on Monday morning (where its fresh scat/fecal matter was also found) and once on Saturday night, according to Malathi Priya, Conservator of Forest, Mysuru circle.

Kumar Pushkar told DH that it is for the first time that the forest department is using this kind of camera on a pilot basis. If they succeed here, they will use it elsewhere also to tackle the man-animal conflict.

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He explained, "In the case of a drone with a normal camera, which we already have, it receives light signals and based on that, it creates images. But in the case of a thermal camera, it picks up the difference in the temperature whenever there is movement of a live body, whether it is animal or human being. Based on that it picks up their shape properly. This is used by the police and the defence for surveillance purposes. We thought of leveraging the technology, use it on a trial basis to trace this leopard since it is evading us despite all efforts. After the trial, if it is really effective, we may procure it to tackle man-animal conflict. It will be used here until Friday."

Kumar Pushkar also said, "In the cases of both Manjunath and Meghana in T Narasipura taluk, the leopard has attacked the way it kills a prey. So it is proven to be a man-eater. With evidences that we have procured it is proven that it is the same leopard which attacked both of them. So we ordered for 'shoot at sight'. But we will kill it only if it matches the images which we already have in trap cameras. Our first priority is to catch it alive," he said.

Malathi Priya informed that in the past one week some of the special teams had rushed to places from where they got calls.

"Some teams stayed around cages and trap cameras to monitor. They used one normal drone too for the operation in the past one week. Now more focus will be laid around Mallikarjunaswamy Hill but they will continue operations in other places also.

They are even putting two 'machaans' on the top of two trees, where they have fixed a camera trap for a tree-top view. The moment the camera flashes, they will dart (tranquiliser) the leopard, she added.

As many as 15 special teams, including more than 150 forest personnel, led by Malathi Priya, Conservator of Forest, Mysuru circle and Kamala, DCF Mysuru division, had taken up the operation from December 2 in 97 villages in T Narasipura taluk and adjoining areas.

They have put 10 cages and 10 trap cameras in the old site near Ukkalagere where 22-year-old Manjunath was killed on October 31, and three cages and 10 cameras around the new site at S Kebbehundi (which is 12 km from the old site) where Meghana was killed.

Going by the pug marks and pictures of trap cameras, forest officers say that it could be a six to seven-year-old male leopard.