The modern curse of irritating ringtones on mobile phones has been transformed in rural India into an unlikely device to save the lives of leopards and human beings.

Forestry officials in western India have started using ringtones of cows mooing, goats bleating and cocks crowing to catch big cats that have wandered into human settlements.

In an unusual example of old India meeting new, officials in the western state of Gujarat say that they have lured five leopards into cages using the sound of mobile phones ringing instead of the usual live bait.

Thousands of leopards roam the Indian countryside, and while searching for food they have long been known to wander into villages and even cities, where they can kill humans or be killed by them.

For decades forestry officials have been catching errant leopards by using live goats, cows, sheep or chickens tied to trees to lure the cats into deep pits.

They then release them into the wild far from inhabited areas.

Officials say that the ringtones are proving to be just as effective – and much safer – because the leopards often sustain injuries when they fall into the pits.

The officials downloaded the ringtones from the internet, attached their phones to loud-speakers behind the cages, and then repeatedly called the phones until the noise attracted the leopards.

It is one of the more colourful illustrations of the extent to which mobile telephony has penetrated the Indian market from the mega-cities of Bombay and Delhi right down to the forests of Gujarat.

Mobile phones were first introduced into India in 1994 and for the next ten years were regarded largely as futuristic devices available only to the wealthy elite. But last year India overtook China as the world’s fastest-growing mobile-phone market.

India now has 140 million mobile-phone users, compared with 10 million in 2003, making it the third-biggest market behind China on 450 million and the United States on 220 million.

R. V. Ansari, the additional principal chief conservator of forests in Gujarat, told The Times that he first heard of one of his field officers using the ringtone trap about five months ago. “One of the field officers, in the absence of live bait, used the ringtone to attract the wild cat,” he said.

Wildlife activists have welcomed the initiative as a more humane way to trap the cats, whose numbers have been declining in recent years because of poaching and human encroachment on their natural habitats. Poachers have killed at least 369 leopards over two years, according to rough numbers compiled by the Wildlife Protection Society of India.

But Mr Ansari dashed any hopes that the ringtone trap would soon become standard practice for forestry officials. “Let me clarify that luring the wild cats through these ringtones is not a normal practice,” he said.

“One thing that can be ascertained is that this method is not the correct way to trap the big cats.”

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