Running For Life - A Leopard's Tale

Fire in My Backyard Forest



Shafts of golden sunlight lit the green vault of sal forest behind my house. Summer was at its peak, and sal trees had been shedding their leaves. The forest floor wore a yellow-brown carpet of dried leaves. Through it snaked a vague deer path. Wary of making noise, I advanced, treading softly on the path. My ears caught faintest of the jungle sounds – the buzzing flight of a bee, the scrape of a lizard’s claws, and the faraway flutter of wings. Even more than my ears and eyes, I was alive to the spirit of the forest – I could feel the forest.

Suddenly, through the corner of my eye, I saw a small patch in the pattern of shade and light on the ground, fifty feet to my left, ruffle for a moment. I thought I might have imagined it, but I wanted to be sure; for one must not ignore small messages and little signs the forest gives to the one who wants to be there. I froze. I did not turn my head for a better look, waiting for it to happen again.

Moments, stretched out like minutes, beat past my heart. It happened again; a spot of light in the dappled leaf bed twitched. I slowly turned my head to have a better look. There she was: a leopard suckling her two cubs as she lay on her side with her back toward me. I could see her through the thin screen of a lantana bush in which she lay. Filtered down through the green canopy of leaves the rays of sun etched out her youthful form with a golden sheen. Her flank rose and fell rhythmically as she slowly drew in and let her breath out. The heads of her two cubs were just visible over the curve of her body. It was the little white spot at the end of her long tail that had caught my eye as she twitched the tip of her tail in contentment.

A wave of fear and surprise shook me. I did not expect this part of the forest to be inhabited by a leopard; there wasn’t enough prey in it to sustain a leopard. People had killed and eaten away most of the wild animals that a leopard hunts for food.

But there they were: a mother and her two cubs. I know a mother can fearlessly face any threat to her children; and here was a mother armed with razor sharp claws and dagger-like fangs. I feared that she would resent my intrusion. It is different when you watch a leopard in a zoo. You watch it from the safety of a viewers’ gallery. But if alone and unarmed you meet her on her ground with nothing to stop her charge, you do not want to catch the attention of a loving and caring mother leopard with her cubs. Pound for pound, a leopard is said to be the strongest of the big cats of the world. You would rather enjoy the sight of a beautiful spotted big cat playing with her cuddlesome babies in a zoo.

One of the cubs happened to peer over the reclining body of his mother. Its eyes locked on me. I might have made some movement that had caught his eye. It stopped feeding. The mother stood up and turned a reproachful eye toward me. For a fleeting moment she drew her ears back, flat against her head; and cast an appraising glance at me. Her mouth slightly ajar, a faint growl came out of it; but her eyes said she was not alarmed. Without wasting another look at me, she turned and led her cubs away from me; deeper into the lantana thickets, and was out of my sight.

I turned back; elated and content at the beautiful sight I had just witnessed in the forest behind my house. I felt I should take a chance to see them again early next morning.

But I did not get my chance. It had been one of the hottest and driest summers to have struck the forest in recent years. The forest was tinder dry. The hot day waned and sun shimmered down the western horizon. In the thickening dusk, tongues of fire leapt up the bank of a nullah, half a mile to the west of where I had seen the leopard family. Someone had set fire to the forest. The evening breeze fanned it; and it quickly gained in strength. In no time at all, the entire forest was on fire. Flames leapt high up into the leafy branches of the tall sal trees. Sparks flew, and bursts of crackling and exploding sounds of twigs and branches filled the air as they caught fire. The forest turned into a red and yellow wall of angry flames. Dark crying silhouettes of the dislodged and frightened roosting birds flitted across the wall of fire. Over the myriad sounds came the death cries of unseen dwellers of the forest.

The fire reached the edge of the forest. Crops were ready for the harvest. We rushed in to beat the fire out. A Forest Patrol arrived from the nearby Range Headquarters and tried to control the fire. But the blaze could not be contained. All that could be achieved was to check its advance at the narrow road that separated the fire from the crops.

The following day saw the forest smoldering in silence; thin wisps and ribbons of smoke arose from among the ashes and the burnt tangle of bushes that had covered the ground a day ago.

It was a heart-rending sight. Scorched skeletons of tall trees stood mourning their dead friends and young ones. In the deathly stillness of the forest, the charred bones and ribs of a small deer stood out parched white against the fire-blackened ground. The forest, which was alive with life and sound a day before, was sad. That evening I was told fire had killed more than a dozen monkeys, half a dozen peacocks, and many other birds that were roosting in the trees near the road. I wondered if the leopard family had also been killed in the fire. The thought was very depressing.

Two days later, a leopard was seen near a village a mile away from the burnt forest. The report in the news paper said people were in panic; the leopard had let loose a reign of terror; and no one ventured out after dusk. To me the lines seemed to be straight out of Jim Corbett’s ‘Man-eating Leopard of Rudrapryag’; the tale of a leopard that operated a hundred years ago, in an area four hours of drive from Dehradun. I visited the village, for it was not far from my house. People were amused: where else would a leopard live, if not in the forest? They asked. The leopard had caused them no harm. I did not find them in panic; they were used to the presence of wild animals in their neighborhood.

That night this patch of forest also was burnt down. The fire had caused extensive damage to the forest. A few days later, there was yet another sighting of a leopard; this time it was four miles away from the spot where a leopard had been last reported. As before, the report described people living in panic and suffering from the reign of terror caused by the leopard in the area. Once again the forest was burnt.

Then all of a sudden leopard sightings stopped; peace returned. But it was a lull before the storm. The world famous Wildlife Institute of India is just half a mile from my house. The land on which it stands was once a forest, linked with the forest behind my house. Over the years, the links were severed; clusters of houses mushroomed in the spaces along the edge of the forest. A high wall around the Institute now protects a small patch of forest on its estate. A small spring-fed stream flows in it through tall wild grasses, shrubs and trees. It is as a safe heaven for many wild animals of the erstwhile forest; monkeys, hares, jackals, peafowl, jungle fowl, partridges, snakes, tortoises, mongooses live in it; leopards are known to visit it, but they do not stay for long. The beleaguered leopardess arrived with her two cubs, and decided to stay in it for the time being.

The forest she had taken shelter in did not have enough prey in it to feed her family. She started picking up stray dogs and small animals at night from the villages around. One day a dog killed by her was found snagged on the sharp hooks of the boundary wall by the workers in the Institute. It made her presence on the campus known to everyone in the Institute. Now everyone was on the lookout for the leopard. It was not long before she was sighted by the people. She was seen accompanied with her two cubs in the forest behind the students’ hostel.

Safety of human life was a hot topic for discussion; but there was a difference. The discussions did not stop at human safety concerns; the protection for the leopard and her cubs also was a part of concern of the human minds. Opinions were split over how to deal with a leopard mother and her cubs. Some argued her presence was a normal event; for leopards had been seen on the campus even on earlier occasions. She would shift out in due course of time, they held. Others feared human backlash if any one was attacked or injured by the mother in defense of her cubs. They favored capture of the leopards and their release in a far-off forest.

Some workers on the campus tried to drive them away early one morning; and a boy was mauled by the leopard on the campus of the Institute. The news of the leopards living in their midst was unwelcome; nobody wished leopards to live near them. If the Director did not take any action and let people take the matter in their hands, the fate of the leopards was sealed. He decided to take the help of the forest department. Traps were set up at the leopards’ favorite haunts. The dense undergrowth of bushes was cleared for better safety of human life. But all efforts came to a futile end.

Providence intervened, and a light, pre-monsoon rain fell; the parched forest lapped up the rain drops thirstily. Sap rose in the dry grass-blades and comatose stems of bushes. Fresh green buds burst out on skeletal plants; the sparse tangles of lantana bushes became dense. The forest became a better place for the wild animals. The cubs had grown up, and were more mobile now. When the people in the Institute tried to drive away the leopards, they moved back to the forest where I had seen them earlier.

But they could not stay there: the prey was missing. The leopards moved on to an unknown part of the forest.

The mother was still on the run for life – hers as well as of her cubs’. Whether the mother found a safe heaven for her cubs or not, I do not know. But she left behind some questions for us to answer.

The fire that made the mother leopard with cubs run for her life and the life of her family was not a natural fire. There had been no thunder storm, or high wind that could have produced fire in the forest. A carelessly thrown butt of cigarette or bidi would have started fire, but at one point. The fire appeared all of a sudden as a long row of flickering flames. Someone had set forest on fire. The first question was: Who set her forest on fire, and why?

I did not know who they were, and why they did so. So, I tried to find the answer to her question. On the land abutting the forest the crops were nearing harvest time. No one would run the risk of wind blowing the fire into their standing crops. Young boys in my village had come out of their own to the help the forest department put out the raging fire. They could not have been the ones to set fire to the forest. Who else would commit such a horrific act?

A tall, slim, middle-aged man had hurriedly walked out of the forest just after the fire appeared on the rim of the nullah. He caught my attention because he was wearing a full sleeved striped shirt and a dirty white pyjama, a dress not worn by the local villagers. I thought he might have seen the leopard while collecting firewood and I did not pay him much attention. Was he the one who had set fire to the forest?

People in my village let their cattle loose to pasture in the grassy blanks in the forest. They also fetched back firewood and fodder from the forest for use at home. There were others around who had an innate dread of the jungle. For them it was a place for the spirits and the ferocious animals. Most of them never entered the forest, for they were not dependent on the forest for their livelihoods.

Yet there were those who did not live near the forest; but they regularly entered the forest. Small groups of old men and women went into the forest early in the morning, carrying sickles and axes and cords with them; where they cut up fallen trees and made bundles of firewood for sale in the town. All day they streamed out of the forest, carrying head-loads of firewood to the near by bakeries and low price tea and food stalls that line the road to Dehradun. They spent time in the forest and were not afraid of the wild animals. And they knew how to meet their livelihood needs.

During the rainy season old rotten branches fall to the ground; swollen watercourses bring down trees grown on their banks. There is ample supply of dead, dry and fallen firewood on the ground in the forest. But it soon declines as it is taken out and sold in the market. The axe seeks logs and the stumps of trees, which are converted into splits of firewood and sold in the town. But it, too, does not last long. The forest grows a new generation of trees and shrubs every year; the firewood cutters know how to convert them into firewood. They remove the bark of trees and young saplings, and leave them standing to die. Soon these are dry and ready for removal as dead wood. Naturally dead and fallen firewood is crooked in form, and varies in thickness and length; but very long and straight firewood comes from the young trees that were cut and left to dry in the forest. Each head load of eight to ten feet long sticks is made of fifteen to twenty future trees. With the advance of summer this supply, too, dwindles out. By the time summer advances to its peak the forest is exhausted of all dead and dry firewood. Forest is then set on fire to quickly dry out the green bushes and take out their thin branches for sale in the market.

This is also the time when the young of wild animals are at their most vulnerable age. Most of the wild animals bring their young into this world just before nature produces food for them; which is when spring meets summer. This is the time when mothers are bringing up their little ones. Peacocks, jungle fowl, partridges, pheasants, deer, wild boar, bears, leopards, tigers, and all other animals that live on the ground or in the trees are with their young. Fire displaces them, kills them, and destroys their food and shelters. Survivors try to seek shelter in less disturbed cover, and sometimes come close to the edge of the forests.

The woodcutters had set the forest on fire, only for earning their daily bread. These people are the poorest of the poor; but they are absolutely unconcerned about the death of animals in the forest; and they could not care less what happened to a mother and her babies. Poverty and hunger can not promote soft sentiments for wildlife in their minds; they have to face a harsh and ruthless world of human beings.

Food, space, mates and security are the basic needs of life; people as well as wild animals value them. No one is rich or poor in the jungle. Health means Life; Life feeds on Death; Death begets Life. There is no place for senseless killings in the Law of the Jungle. The deer knows when a tiger is satiated and will not attack it. There is no place in it for jealousy, ego, greed or anarchy.

The leopardess was forced to leave every forest where she had tried to take shelter. It was summer when the fire in the forest forced the mother leopard to shift her cubs and exposed her to the people. She did not try to come near human habitation during the rainy season or the winter months. She did not harm anyone, why did people become her enemies? Didn’t she have a right to raise her young ones in her natural home? The forest where she lived seemed to echo her questions. Who will answer mother leopard’s unanswered questions?

I struggled to answer the question; but could not. All I could think of was that we are too far removed from the ethics of life. Everyone of us – the professional forester, the media, the politician, the town planner, the local householder – has to revisit our notions about man and wildlife and work together in an enlightened manner. Otherwise, like the tiger, the leopard is also heading towards extinction, and we are jointly responsible for it.