Second Leopard trapped in Alipiri walkway, third in two months

TIRUMALA: Forest officials trapped a second leopard near the Lakshminarasimhaswamy temple area on the Alipiri walkway during the wee hours of Thursday. The first leopard was trapped in the same place on Monday in one of the three traps set up to catch the man-eater big cat after the gruesome killing of five-year-old Lakshita.

With this, the total number of leopards caught by forest officers in the last fifty days rose to three. Forest officers of the Seshachalam forest range set up two more traps at Mokalimitta and 35th Malupu spots. In addition, experts from Srisailam forest set up over 300 trap cameras to observe the movement of leopards in the Seshachalam range.

The experts pointed out that it was rare for leopards that were basically territorial in nature, to crisscross into each other’s territories. They said that they do enter other territories during mating time. All three leopards caught on the Alipiri walkway were transferred to Tirupati Zoo and the man-eater leopard can be identified after the victim’s DNA can be found from samples taken from those leopards.