Dozens of Tiny Leopard Cubs Left Stranded at Farms Are Rescued and Reunited with Their Mothers (Exclusive)

NEED TO KNOW

• Wildlife SOS created a program to reunite leopard cubs with their mothers in Central India

• The organization uses reunion boxes and camera traps to return cubs to their mothers at night

• The program has a 95 percent success rate and aims to keep leopards in the wild whenever possible

Leopard cubs who accidentally get separated from their moms in the farm fields of India are no longer left stranded from their families forever.

Wildlife SOS created a rescue program to help confused newborn cubs find their way back to their moms.

“In Central India, the landscape has changed a lot. They’ve deforested a lot of areas and put in sugar cane,” Thomas Sharp, the director of conservation and research at Wildlife SOS, tells PEOPLE.

“We were working with the local people to save and conserve leopards in this general area, and it came to our attention that the cubs were often getting separated from their mothers,” he adds, noting that, unlike lions and tigers, leopards are fairly comfortable living close to human habitation.

Wildlife SOS learned that as sugarcane and cornfields became more plentiful in Central India, so did cases of mother leopards venturing into these fields to give birth and care for their young. Occasionally, a leopard mom would leave a newborn cub behind, often intentionally so she had time to get food for her growing family, but using the fields as a nursery still proved to be a problem.

“What happens is sometimes people will notice leopard kittens alone, and they figure they’ve been abandoned or something, when often that is not the case,” Sharp explains. “The mother will sometimes leave the baby; she goes off to hunt and comes back at night, but people often don’t know this. So they pick up the kittens.”

Unfortunately, when these well-intentioned people picked up the leopard cubs and moved them from the fields, they were separating them from their mothers and setting the little animals up for a lifetime of captivity, as young leopards are often ineligible for release.

To keep India’s leopards wild, Wildlife SOS launched a rescue program that raises awareness about what to do when someone finds a wild baby leopard—contact wildlife authorities and leave the animal where it is—and has a plan for when cubs are separated from their moms.

“There’s also some evidence to suggest that while the leopard mothers are searching for their young, they can be more aggressive. So there actually is a danger to humans as well, and it’s better to get the cubs back to their mom as soon as possible,” Sharp adds.

The solution Wildlife SOS came up with was a reunion box. The rescue effort starts when the animal welfare organization learns about a leopard cub that has been brought to rescuers from a nearby field. First, Wildlife SOS travels to the cub’s location “as soon as possible,” per Sharp, and performs a medical exam to ensure no serious health issues are affecting the little leopard.

If the cub gets a clean bill of health, Wildlife SOS waits until nightfall, when mother leopards are likely to be most active, and places the stranded cub in a plastic tub at the site where it was found.

“You don’t want the cubs getting picked off by other predators, so you put them in the tub with a lid and a tiny weight on it, nothing much, just enough so the cubs can’t so they can’t push out. And it has big holes in it so they can breathe, and so the mother can smell them and hear them while they’re meowing,” Sharp shares.

Wildlife SOS officials place camera traps and the prepared tub at the spot where the cub was found, then step out of sight to avoid scaring off the mother.

“We set up camera traps around the area so that we can see if the mother is approaching,” Sharp says. “Oftentimes, she comes in, she’ll circle the area multiple times before going in to get the cubs. Then she’ll knock the box over, and, like any house cat, she’ll pick them up by the scruff of the neck and walk them back into a little safe area.”

This response to abandoned leopard cub issues in Central India has led to dozens of reunions between mother leopards and their babies, saving numerous leopards from a life of captivity. Per Sharp, 95 percent of the attempted reunions are successful. Any cubs not claimed by their mothers are hand-reared and cared for at a rescue, so no leopard is left behind.

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“We’re trying to get these cubs back to their mother to live in the wild. We will keep them in captivity if there’s no other option, but we want them back in the wild,” Sharp emphasizes.

To learn more about Wildlife SOS and its efforts to help wild animals around the world, visit the organization’s website.

Read the original article on People