Avril Khambatta Thakur noticed the huge number of unproductive cattle population grazing in the Mansinghdeo wild life sanctuary, Pench Tiger Reserve (Maharashtra), Navegaon Nagzira Tiger Reserve and other buffer and protected areas of the Vidarbha forest. These cattle including goats not only use to graze on the grass land meant for the wild herbivore, but also spread disease among the wild herbivore. There had been instances of spread of Foot and Mouth diseases among the Indian Gaur, resulting into the death of more than 80 Indian Gaurs.
Avril started with the vaccination of these cattle and goats against FMD and later on also started to vaccinate stray dogs, so as to prevent the spread of rabies and canine distemper among the wild carnivores. Avril along with her volunteers carries out her vaccination program from 1st October (wild life week) every year. Initially Avril faced lots of resistance from the inhabitants, who used to think that they are forest people and have come to kill their animals in the pretext of vaccination. Its full ten years and now the inhabitants wait for her to reach out to them for vaccination and other veterinary help.
Avril is deciding to start with the vaccination of the goats against PPR Virus from October 2021, after seeing the death of lion pride in Gujrat due to canine distemper. The post mortem report found the cause of death as distemper because of the mutation of the PPRV (Morbili Virus) into canine distemper (Morbili Virus).
