Incidents of packs of stray dogs killing deer in the forests of Telangana, even in sanctuaries where the wildlife is supposed to be protected, are becoming increasingly common. Wildlife protection in Telangana State, it appears, has literally gone to the dogs. This is particularly the case with wild herbivores, including various species of deer.
Incidents of packs of stray dogs killing deer in the forests of Telangana, even in sanctuaries where the wildlife is supposed to be protected, are becoming increasingly common. “This is the case also with every other forest area where villagers have unrestricted access to the forests,” sources said.
The latest such incident was reported from Kasipet village in Mancherial district where a pack of stray dogs set upon a young Sambar deer that strayed from the forest and entered the village.
The deer was killed near a temple in the village in the incident that occurred on Friday.
It is learnt that efforts by the Forest Department to ensure the so-called ‘repopulation’ of forests with deer translocated from the parks and the zoo in the city, has only added to the increasing incidents of such attacks by stray dogs. The deer transported from Hyderabad to the forests are strangers in a new land and have no knowledge of the landscape they are left in unlike the animals born in the forest which grow up and learn the lay of the land, the sources explained.
“These deer usually stick around a waterhole once they discover one and the dogs merely have to lie in wait for the deer to appear,” a source said.
If the wildlife in the forest is actually protected, there would have been no need to translocate deer in the first place, according to a wildlife expert.
The menace of stray dogs in Telangana’s forests has reached such proportions that they are even attacking Niligais, one of the largest antelopes in the world. Just in Kawal alone, two deer were killed in the past few days. While a Chital deer stag was learnt to have been chased from the forest by a pack of stray dogs and killed as it tried to escape two days ago, the second was a female Chital that was found with severe injuries from dog bites. Though it was picked up by the Forest Department staff for rescue, it died soon after.
These dog attacks are common not just in Kawal Tiger Reserve but in Amrabad Tiger Reserve too as well as in every other forest areas of the State, it was learnt.#KhabarLive
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