The Rawalpindi Wildlife Department has launched an awareness campaign, creating awareness about the common leopard and how to stay safe from its attacks on people and livestock in local schools and communities in Tehsil Kahuta.
After getting a number of complaints from the villages of Banaal, Pharri, and Khad in Tehsil Kahuta, Rawalpindi, regarding a common leopard that has been attacking livestock, Assistant Director Wildlife Rawalpindi, Rizwana Aziz, with her staff, comprising Kahuta Wildlife Inspector, Talat Mehmood, and Kahuta Wildlife Watchers Mohammad Safeer, Adnan Safeer, and Sohail Muzaffar, visited the region to start the awareness campaign in local schools and communities.
The team started by gathering students and teachers in Banaal and talking to them about the big cat. The team explained to them that when the people leave their animals out in the open fields and jungle during the day, they should bring them back home by the evening between Asr and Maghrib prayers.
It insisted the attendees to refrain from letting their animals stay out at night when the leopard is active.
The Wildlife department team further distributed pamphlets and simple-worded flyers telling them how the locals can save themselves and their animals from the common leopard.
Meanwhile, the Assistant Director along with her team then visited Pharri, where they had received many complaints of livestock being attacked by leopards.
Talking to the media, Aziz said that these villages are small settlements with about eight houses each and that she inquired the man how and where the leopard had attacked his cow. The owner said that he and the villagers set their animals out into the forest during the day where they grow up, breed, and live, never returning to the village. He maintained that his cow was in jungle that had been killed by the leopard that had also injured a couple of goats.
The locals also affirmed that the leopards had never attacked people or animals within the village.
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