The big cat’s lair is a blind spot for the Mumbai Metro Rail Corporation (MMRC) Metro plans. On Thursday, the MMRC issued a statement that the state government is thinking of taking over a private plot of Royal Palms in Goregaon to set up the proposed car depot of Metro-III, after the ministry of forests and environment (MoEF) declared Aarey Milk Colony an ecologically-sensitive zone recently.

The new plan has raised environmentalists’ hackles further. Wildlife experts believe that the Royal Plams plot, just 2.5 km from the original site for the car shed, is a largely unexplored territory that is home to a number of leopards. They feel that a wildlife corridor exists between the Film City helipad point and Aarey Milk Colony passing via Royal Palms and any new development in the area may spark human-leopard conflicts.