By Deepali Ravi Mishra
A 10-month-old female leopard cub was saved from certain death, after a wildlife rescue organization along with the forest department not only managed to rescue it from a 40 feet deep well but also reunited it with its mother.

The incident occurred on 16th July afternoon in Shirur Taluka of Pune district in Maharashtra. It was a local farmer who first saw the leopard trapped in the well and was paddling to stay afloat after which the he immediately alerted the forest department.

Wildlife SOS team at the Manikdoh Leopard Rescue Center (MLRC) in Junnar for assistance. The forest department with help of locals meanwhile lowered a wooden ladder into the well so that the leopard could use it as a temporary support and did not drown due to exhaustion from paddling in the well.

Wildlife SOS received a call around 3pm left with his team for a 148-kilometre journey for Shirur and reached around 5.30 pm.

“We lowered our trap cage into the well and seeing it the leopard quickly jumped in it and once we were sure that the leopard was safely trapped we pulled the cage out,” said Deshmukh adding that the cub must have wandered into the field out of curiosity and had the misfortune of falling into the uncovered well.

After the rescue the leopard cub was thoroughly examined by Deshmukh and his team who found out that the female cub was old enough to be released back into the wild. “The villagers had reported that the mother leopard was also spotted in the vicinity so later in the night we took the cub to the same field and released it so that it could find its mother,” he informed.