HYDERABAD: The forests in Vikarabad district, a popular weekend destination for many from the city, are fast turning into killing grounds for chital, or the spotted deer, the state animal.
On an average at least one chital is being killed by packs of stray dogs roaming the reserve forests in the district, particularly in and around the popular Anantagiri Hills and the Damagundam forest block.
Chief Minister K. Chandrashekar Rao had selected the chital as the state animal in November 2014. On the state government’s Telangana State portal, the spotted deer is described as an animal “that reflects the mindset of the people of Telangana as it (the deer) is very sensitive and innocent.” The portal also says the chital is “deeply associated with Indian history and a reference to this graceful animal was there in the great epic Ramayana.”
However, despite the sentiments with which the deer was chosen as the state animal the chital do not appear to have any help in the face of packs of dogs that roam the Vikarabad forests. These attacks rise, according to some residents in the area, just after monsoon after the rutting season. Sometimes, heavily pregnant female deer fall prey to the dogs. Even fully grown stags are killed regularly by the dogs from the villages that dot the forest.
“We have asked the local municipal officials multiple times to catch the stray dogs. They say they do not have the manpower and sometimes cite the problems they had in the past with animal rights groups which insist that the dogs cannot be removed from their areas,” Vikarabad range officer Aruna Naik said, when asked about the steps taken by the forest department to end the stray dog attacks on the deer.
There are three civic bodies — the Vikarabad municipality, and the Podur and Kotrepalli mandal parishads — whose jurisdictions have patches of these forests, and unless officials from all three work together, the stray dog menace cannot be checked.
The latest instance of a deer being killed occurred next to the fence of the upcoming National Prison Academy on the morning of November 6. The 150-acre prison academy area that is being fenced is cutting off the traditional moving routes of the deer that move from one patch of the forest to another. The new real estate ventures coming up in the area too are learnt to be cutting off access to the deer.
