May 13, 2022: The black panther was caught on camera in South Goa’s Bhagwan Mahavir Wildlife Sanctuary on April 25.
In a unique natural sighting, the Goa State Forest Department captured a rare black panther through a camera trap placed in a wildlife sanctuary. According to state Forest Minister Vishwajit Rane, This catapulted the government into installing more such cameras within the forest area to monitor the big cat’s movements.
He tweeted, “An amazing sighting of the #BlackPanther captured at Mollem through the camera trap. I have asked the Department to keep track and monitor movements of the Black Panther. We shall be putting up more camera traps to monitor his thorough movement.”
A picture was shared by the state forest department, last Sunday, of the black panther spotted near South Goa’s Bhagwan Mahavir Wildlife Sanctuary on April 25. The panther was walking through the forested land.
A black panther is essentially the melanistic colour variant of the leopard (Panthera pardus) and the jaguar (Panthera onca). They are mostly found in tropical forests, with black leopards inhabiting the forests of Kenya, India, Sri Lanka, Nepal, Thailand, Peninsular Malaysia and Java, and black jaguars of the Americas in Mexico, Panama, Costa Rica and Paraguay.