It wasn’t a mock drill, a Gaur (Indian Bison) was in Pashan-Suttarwadi highway right next to urban settlements. The Pune Forest Department and the RESQ Charitable Trust team reached the locations first and immediately called the Pune Police for back up support, which they sent in full force promptly.
The Gaur was on the side of the highway and while it made several attempts to get on the highway, our teams managed to safely divert it, without putting it in panic, into a safe area away just off the highway.
Three members of the RESQ Charitable Trust team stayed with the Gaur at a safe distance, tracking its every movement and reporting rest of us managing things out of radius of comfort. The Pune Police did a fantastic job of keeping the traffic moving and ensuring the hundreds of people stayed on the outskirts of the periphery of where the teams were working. Forest Department officials and the RESQ teams strategized decided that we needed to create a safe passage for this Gaurs exit into nearby forest area. Together, we organised resources we needed to create barricades and blockages so that he doesn’t enter the city or get on the highway.
All this time, the animal was kept calm while we all worked from a distance. He sat, stood, ate, drank water from a canal and was kept extremely stress free from morning to evening (the same cannot be said for our stress levels, because all we were concerned about is him getting onto the highway and into the main city!)
By the evening, as soon as it got dark, we waited for him to move and diverted him to the place he needed to go for safe passage using visual blockades that were put up during the day. The Gaur made his way up the hill to safety while the teams tracked him from a safe distance.
-Neha Panchamia
