Uttar Pradesh is finally going to acquire its first wildlife rescue centre. A blue print of the centre, to be set up in the Kukrail forest for rehabilitating wild animals, mainly leopards, has been cleared by state forest department. The proposal will be forwarded to the union ministry of Environment and Forest (MoEF) for formal approval by next week, chief conservator of forests UP, BK Patnaik told the Times of India on Friday. A sudden spurt in the number of stray leopards wandering into human habitations has apparently lent urgency to the project which lay forgotten since last three years. A similar proposal was mooted and later shelved in 2005, sources claimed. However with the highest tally ever of stray leopards finding their way into human settlements, the situation has turned alarming. The year 2008 saw five such cases, with leopards brought from Lakhimpur, Motipur, Malihabad and Sonebhdra, says Renu Singh, director Lucknow zoo.In 1997, a male and female leopard were captured from a dry well in Gonda and brought to the zoo, in the first-ever such instance, she said. Since then every year practically, the department took in one or two cases mostly from the districts bordering forest reserves. The first shocker was discovery of a full grown male leopard in Allahabad cantonment area in 2006. Now the phenomenon of five big cats breaking into the city limits over last eight months cannot be explained away and the department will shortly be commissioning a study to go into the likely causes for the aberrant behaviour, a senior officer said . The influx has caused much anxiety to authorities in Lucknow and Kanpur zoo - the only places where the animals can finally be sent for shelter. Lucknow zoo, which has the capacity of four