The left hand doesn’t know what the right hand is doing- How true in wild animal rescue!

 

An appeal to the readers

‘An inquiring and open mind is halfway house to science’

My blog https://www.wildcries.com is completing one year today. I consider that the subject of wildlife management in the country and elsewhere is received with engrossing interest by general readers, as revealed from a series of reporting that appear in the print, electronic and social media on wide ranging issues connected with wildlife. Though I admit that a science subject of this kind would only enthuse niche readers to flip through the contents, I take effort to make the blog posts as much generic as possible. While thanking my readers for their overwhelming response, I wish that my readers continue to support and follow my blog.. 

Argument Setting 

"The left hand doesn't know what the right hand is doing". 

This verse is the origin of a common English expression, generally a term of derision for an organization, where different members are pursuing opposing or contradictory goals. This is to mean that the people in one part of an organization do not know what the people in another part are doing and this is causing confusion or difficulties as the actions go on uncoordinated. 

        How well this expression, which nearly is used as a criticism of an organization, has been portrayed when I made a comparison of two separate wild leopard (syn. panther) rescue operations that happened in two different locations within Tamil Nadu almost at a period close to each other.

Circumstances leading to distress

As the human ingression into wilderness progressed with the onset of civilization, it was mainly with the aim of achieving a settled way of life. Transforming from a nomadic lifestyle to sedentary mode called for establishing farming and associated activities on most suitable lands. Forest lands along the perennial and seasonal water courses fell easy prey to agrarian expansion. Men came to widen his scope of cultivation from mainly a rain-fed or nature-dependent farming to irrigated agriculture long ago. This led to the installation of many irrigation infrastructures that included dams and reservoirs, ponds and lakes, canals and channels and open wells/tube wells. While the former set helped men to efficiently use the surface water resources, the last one assisted in abstracting ground water to his benefit. Many of the open wells located close to forest boundaries and the canals running through the forest landscapes turn into virtual death traps for some wild animals at times. Incidents such as elephant calves washed down into the backwaters of the dam during flash floods, and/or trapped in the canals with steep embankments, leopard, sloth bear or deer falling into the deep open well close to the forests are often recorded in several parts of the country. The farmers also indulge in setting snare along the cultivation borders to ward off small and medium sized wild animals such as hare, wild pig, deer etc. Many times, unintended animals like tiger, leopard, sloth bear etc. get entangled in the snares putting them in distress.

        When some domesticated cattle of a villager is preyed upon by a wild carnivore, in revenge he resorts to dowsing the carcass with some poison. Since the carnivore feeds on the hunted animal only partially at a time and has the habit of returning to the carcass on several occasions in subsequent days, the poisoned carcass becomes a sure death recipe for the wild animal feeding on it. If the carnivore has the luck on its side and if attended on time, the animal may escape with symptoms of mild poisoning and might well be rescued and rehabilitated by the forest officials.  

         In nature where the theory of ‘survival of the fittest’ is in full play, any cub of a wild cat that has been suffering from some deformity at birth or debilitated due to an injury that it sustained becomes too much of a botheration for the mother to nurse when she has to take care of the other siblings in the litter. Such cubs get abandoned in wild and unless detected immediately and rehabilitated, their survival prospect becomes questionable. The option of ‘rewilding’ such abandoned and rescued cub is emerging as a mind-ticking experiment in many states in the country, though success from such an expensive trial is not beyond doubt. One such rendezvous is in progress in Tamil Nadu’s Anamalai Tiger Reserve.

Carnivore Rescue matrix

In this post, I intend to provide a narrative on the circumstances leading to distress for the carnivores in the forest vicinities and the rescue alternatives, which the forest department embarks upon noticing any such event. The matrix provided in the statement presents the immense opportunities available before forest managers to salvage the animal in distress in the descending order of preference.

Abandoned/Orphaned cub- Reunion with its mother < Relocation to a zoological  park <Rewilding

Entrapped in a snare-  Retrieval by chemical immobilization, followed by rehabilitation into wild <        Rehabilitation to a zoological park

Fall in a deep well or pit- Aided return to wild < Rescue through chemical immobilization followed by  rehabilitation into wild < Rescue through chemical immobilization followed by rehabilitation to a zoological park                                                

Carcass poisoning- Mortality mostly < Chemical immobilization followed by rehabilitation in wild <      Chemical immobilization followed by rehabilitation to a zoological park, if the scale of poisoning is low                                                       

        I am confining the current presentation to the leopard/panther and its rescue under distress conditions from open wells. Many open wells exist close to the forest boundaries that are devoid of parapet walls though an inventory of the same has not been attempted so far by any agency. I will discuss two episodes concerning leopard rescue from open wells.

Episode 1: Rescue of a Panther from a deep well In Kannivadi Range of Dindigul Division, Tamil Nadu 

Message reached Kannivadi Range in Dindigul division on an early morning of June 2003 that a leopard was found at the bottom of an abandoned 100 ft deep open well at Panapatti kombai village. The animal that came into a farmer’s field the previous night for some prey- could be a dog or goat- accidentally fell into the well with no parapet wall. The animal was found standing at one corner of the well where the level of water was barely over a foot. The District Forest Officer thought it appropriate to go for tranquilising the leopard, bring the animal under sedation out of the well and later release it into interior forest. 

        A Forest Range Officer conversant with accurately darting wild animals and the Forest Veterinary Officer rushed from Coimbatore, more than 100 km from the spot late in the evening. After assessing the ground situation, the Range Officer went down sitting in a stretcher secured by ropes on all ends to tranquilise the leopard. 

        When the initial attempt to dart the animal with the help of a blow pipe failed, the Range Officer tried to dart with a tranquilizer gun from about 50’ height above the bed of the well. The animal was darted successfully with proper dose of sedatives only on the fourth attempt at about 12.30 AM. Once satisfied that the animal went into complete sedation, the Range Officer came up and a wild animal tracker was sent down. He tied all the limbs together, placed the animal on the stretcher and tied to it. The crane outside the well lifted the stretcher. 

        The male leopard, which was about seven years of age on examination, was found to have some wounds but no fracture from the fall. After first aid, the animal was shifted to an open van and placed over proper bedding. After driving to the designated site of release about 40 km from the rescue spot, the animal was kept on a moist gunny bag spread on the ground, ropes removed from its legs and was injected with an antidote. 

        Once splashing of water over the head and body was done, the animal was found on its four legs within few minutes. Without making much of a noise, the team rushed back to the van and kept watching the animal. It took nearly an hour for the animal to be steady, upon which it made its way into the forest. It was 7 AM the next day. This meant that the rescue mission took nearly 24 hours to achieve the intended task.   

Episode 2: Rescue of a Panther from an open well In Kothagiri Range, Nilgiris North Division in Tamil Nadu

A few years later, on one morning a leopard was noticed swimming in a 30’ deep open well by villagers near an estate in Kotagiri Range of Nilgiris North division in the Nilgiris hills. The topography of the district is undulating and the landscape is dotted with many small forest blocks in the midst of a vast swathe of human development like coffee, tea, cardamom plantation estates, farm fields, roads and settlements. I have given a detailed account of the uniqueness of Nilgiris landscape in my blog post on the rescue of a sloth bear. Therefore, straying of wild animals such as gaur, elephant, sloth bear, leopard etc from the forests into adjoining human habitations is common. This leopard would have been one such animal on its move from a forest block to the other or in pursuit of its prey. The circular well has been paved on its inner surface with granite stones and the parapet wall raised a metre above the ground level. Apparently, the leopard had slipped into the well through a damaged portion of the parapet the previous night.

        Kotagiri range staff was alerted by the villagers. Soon they rushed to the spot to find a healthy panther in its prime of youth wading through the muddy water. It was ascertained that the well had not been in active use for some years. The staff evaluated the surrounding areas. Field officers’ intimate knowledge on the behavioural traits of the wild animal in question becomes very useful to devise the site-specific rescue plan in the given circumstances. Such plan deploys usually a minimal-interventionist stratagem. They thought that if the animal is somehow facilitated to come out of the well on its own, it will escape through the thick vegetation and then on to the nearby forest. As the sloth bear rescue from an open well in a tea estate happened in the same Kotagiri range few years back, the lesson from that event was fresh in the minds of the staff. 

        Knowing the capability of a leopard to climb lofty trees in the forests to rest or sometimes lifting their kill up to the branches of tall trees to keep it away from the eyes of other predators or scavengers, the officials decided to organize a bamboo ladder for the animal to climb out of the well. They mobilized two tall and sturdy bamboo posts and tied them together side by side with coir ropes. It transformed into a ladder with 12 inch wider base. After tying a stone block at the bottom of the posts with a rope, the staff lowered the ladder into the well in a slanting position so that one end of the ladder got fixed to the bed of the well. The other end was jutting out of the parapet wall close to the broken portion. Fixing a stone block at the bottom was an innovative idea, as water in the well would have otherwise kept the ladder afloat. In that case, the leopard might have turned reluctant to use the ladder.

        

        As expected, the leopard after inspecting the ladder for a while, made its effort to put its limbs over the ladder. Feeling reassured after a few forward steps that the bamboo posts provide sturdier support to balance the animal’s movement over it, the leopard lost no time in gently walking over it and sprinted out of the well smartly. 

       For the forest officials it was a moment of great accomplishment and for the villagers it was a welcome relief. Even as it was disappearing into the thickets, the leopard would have thanked the ingenuity of the people who aided its rescue from its precarious position a few minutes ago. It was redeeming that the whole sequence of events from reporting to the final salvage of the animal in distress were achieved within a gap of two hours from the time the staff received the first information.

Learning

So what does these two different rescue operations dealing with the same animal species that were found in distress under almost identical field conditions tell the readers? While in the first instance, a much elaborate rescue and rehabilitation strategy and process that lasted nearly 24 hours was adopted, in the other incident, a much simpler, quicker and common-sense approach was applied, though at the end the mission objective was realized in both episodes. Either the outcomes from a successful field practice that was used in the rescue of a sloth bear from an open well within the same state a few months before the first episode have not percolated to the field units across the State or the staff in the location of the first episode were oblivious of the innate potential of a leopard as a tree climbing animal. 

       Giving due recognition to the importance of cross-sectional exchange of knowledge and experience, there arises an urgent need to document such success stories and disseminate to all field formations, so that ‘easy to apply’ practice can be replicated with brighter chance of success. Standard Operating Procedures (SOP) have to be developed for such operations. Forest department has been imparting training to field officials on the theories and practices governing rescue and rehabilitation of wild animals in distress, where such case studies can be shared among participants. Adoption becomes easier under such circumstances, though rescue operations have to be a judicious mix of standard practices, combined with site-specific protocol and local innovation(s). 

Social media sharing comes to our aid

Forest officials’ domain expertise on this area of wildlife management of late has got a boost with ever expanding social media network. For instance, if a best package of practices is followed somewhere across the country, the visuals and related information get transmitted so rapidly through social media. It might not be out of context to share an account of two interesting events connected with leopards that had happened in Maharashtra state recently, information on which spread far and wide through social media handles like twitter, face book, you tube etc.  

        In one recent incident, a seven-year-old female leopard that fell into a 30-foot deep open well with waist deep water in Yadavwadi village in Maharashtra was rescued by the staff of Maharashtra Forest department and a team from Wildlife SOS, a NGO without any chemical restraint. They deployed an unconventional method by combining a pair of tools to rescue the animal in dire condition to amazing result. Assisted by the villagers, the department staff first lowered a bamboo ladder held by ropes on all four ends so that the leopard could get onto the platform for temporary support. The leopard did exactly that (Image courtesy: Wildlife SOS). 

                                 

         Even as the ladder was gently pulled up without panicking the animal, a trap cage was lowered into the well. Thankfully, the leopard jumped into the cage right away and seemed almost grateful for a dry and safe spot to get onto. The cage was carefully lifted out of the well and loaded onto a rescue vehicle. After required veterinary care, the leopard was released back into its natural habitat. The whole sequence of events got widely reported in press and media besides sharing in social media (Image courtesy: Wildlife SOS).         

        In another incident involving perhaps a territorial combat between two leopards, one of them escaped through cane fields and climbed onto a coconut tree in a village near Nasik. Hoping that its competitor moved away this animal was coming down the tree to the ground, when the other leopard bounced from an ambush position. Scared, the first leopard probably the weaker one, retreated back to the top of tree. Both had some brief fight near the tree crown, after which one of them came down and vanished. This interesting video clip has been doing rounds worldwide through social media network within the next few hours (Video courtesy Sentinel News  https://youtu.be/T6ZjZ4owEkg).