Project Leopard

Uttarakhand Forest Department is considering the launch of a State Level Project for the conservation of leopard. Project Leopard, as it was referred to in the newspaper report, is the need of the day. Poaching, panic reactions, low prey base in the natural habitat of the leopard in the State, scavenging by leopards, attacks on human beings, and the comparatively lower public profile than that of the tiger make it a difficult endeavor to carry out expecting support from the public who thinks all leopards are man-killers.

It is evident that the Project Leopard will have to be designed and implemented very carefully. The newspaper report indicates that appropriate experts have been involved in the development of the Project. I will like the following points to be examined and, if found useful, accommodated for action in the Project:

1. My personal experience over the past five years of my residence in a village at the edge of forest with leopards in it indicates that the leopards avoided being spotted by human beings. People in and around my village had seen a fleeting glimpse of a leopard only on two occasions over the past five years. There was no panic, and it was treated as a normal incident, contrary to the way the effect of the sighting of leopards is reported in the print media. Perhaps the people with urban background are too far removed from nature to understand that mere sighting of a leopard is not an indicator of the presence of a man-eater. Here, Jim Corbett seems to have left a permanent psychological set back on the minds of the people through his hair-raising adventure with the Man-eating Leopard of Rudraprayag. The Project will need to work for the change in the attitude of the people toward the sighting and presence of leopards in the forests near their habitation. How it will be effectively done is a matter for the experts.
2. Post retirement years have kept me working for wildlife conservation. Conflict with wild animals is a burning issue. I have visited and interacted on my own with people from a few leopard affected sites, such as Khankra near Rudryaprayag; Dogadda, Laldhang, Sigaddi, Kanva Ashram, Kimsar and Garahkot in Pauri; in around Rajaji National Park and Corbett National Park; and villages near Doiwala, Jhajhra, IMA, FRI, WII and Asarori at the fringes of Dehradun. A fair idea was given to me by the people, and pointers that had bearing on the behavior of the leopard and other wildlife came from their way of life. These pointers gave reasons why leopards turned into problem animals.
1. One significant issue was that of disposal of waste from their homes. In most of the areas people casually threw their domestic waste matter just across the road from their residences, or at random at the periphery of their villages. Even dead domestic animals and animal waste is thrown about in the same casual manner. Leopards are opportunistic scavengers. The dumped waste attracts small mammals, birds and other animals, free living as well as domestic, (including pigs, dogs, monkeys, poultry birds), which in turn attract leopards who find new scavenging opportunities as well as potential prey in such animals. Project Leopard will have to address to the development of domestic waste disposal approaches so that people correlate their own role in the mitigation of the conflict and conservation of wildlife in Uttarakhand.
2. Forest fires and people who have made sale of firewood as their calling intensify the problem of leopards others face. Fires take place mostly when leopards have cubs accompanying their mothers. Head-loaders bring out firewood all the year round from the forest to meet the enormous and regular demand of bakeries and small roadside dhabas near the cities. These centers of heavy firewood consumption use highly expensive LPG sparingly. The combined effect of fires and the year round cutting of small trees and bushes by the head loaders  is that the forest gets exhausted of its resource-base for the leopards, particularly where the forests  are close to towns and cities, by the time summers set in. The effect of re-grown vegetation in the forest after monsoons is off-set by mid summer by these two factors. The prey base and the shelters under the green cover are drastically reduced at a time when leopards need them  most for raising their families. Fires drive leopards with cubs closer to the human habitation and thinned ground cover makes their sighting frequent. The Project may need to develop strategies to overcome these constantly present hurdles in conservation of leopard habitat.
3. Leopard habitats are changing in their quality and extent inside the forests even with management interventions. No surveys or studies have been done by anyone on the relationship between management practices and wildlife shifts till date on this aspect of leopard ecology; the effect of management practices and unplanned human interventions need to be researched. The Project must establish a research cell for not only leopard habitat and prey base studies but also for studies on their inter-relationships with co-predator like the tiger and co-scavengers like wild pig, dogs, monkeys etc., the dynamics of prey substitution and distribution, and other related issues.
4. Not all leopards are man-killers. Jim Corbett could find only two leopards, the Panar and the Rudraprayag man-eating leopards, during his entire life as a hunter of man-eaters. The leopard and tiger density at that time was many-folds of what we have today. Possession of firearms by the local people was a rarity in those days. The real man-eaters are not easy to deal with. People lived insecure and completely helpless lives in the far-flung isolated hamlets, and fell easy prey for the man-eaters. But too many leopards have been declared man-eaters over the past five years, and also shot. Jim Corbett could eliminate the problem by shooting just two real man-eaters, but we have failed even after killing a larger number of declared man-eaters. Our actions have supported and strengthened the idea in the minds of the people that every leopard is a potential man-eater. Media persons are also people and they also go along with such ideas. Most of the incidents of leopard attacks resulting in injuries to the people have taken place when leopards were surrounded by excited and violent mobs and  their escape route was blocked. People need to know the procedures and techniques to deal with a cornered leopard, whether in or outside a house. The Project will help people and conserve leopards if such issues are brought under its agenda.
5. I am not convinced with the projected figures for the population of leopards in the State. The ground evidences do not support these figures; our methods and models for estimation of leopard populations do not recognize the limitations of the difficult terrain over which the leopards occur, the spatial niches they occupy and the habitat suitability indices for the animal. The methods found useful in plains areas are not effective in the outer and middle Himalayan leopard ranges. The only approach for assessing the actual area and determining the sampling units for leopards in our hills is the down to earth Habitat Occupancy Mapping technique. Even though some knowingly speak about, it is neither understood nor effectively carried out even by the most of the well meaning experts. Project Leopard will have to develop accurate techniques for understanding where and how many leopards are resident in the forests and scrub of the Uttarakhand landscape.

Lest my suggestions are considered assertive and exhaustive I should clarify that I do not believe that the issues involved are unknown to the officers of the forest department, or to the experts on the subject. I have dealt with Project Elephant and Project Tiger, and man-wildlife conflicts. I have shared some of the points I have presented to the Uttarakhand Forest Department for consideration while formulating the Project.