IN EARLY September, an alleged sighting of a leopard in the upscale Sushant Lok III residential enclave in Gurgaon’s Sector 57 set off alarm bells among residents. It unfolded into a nearly four-hour drama that culminated into an unfruitful search operation for the wild cat or any hint of its presence, including pugmarks. Incidentally, this happened just days after the Gurgaon forest department confirmed that it had obtained camera trap images of leopards and civet cats from nearby Bandhwari forest patch, a part of the Aravallis.

In July, a couple on their honeymoon got the shock of their lives when a leopard broke into their hotel room in Nainital. Fortunately, the big cat did not attack the couple and took refuge in the bathroom instead. The leopard had reportedly ended up in the hotel after being chased by dogs. By the time the forest department team arrived with a cage and tranquiliser gun, the animal had managed to escape into the forest. Earlier this year, leopard scare had gripped areas in and around Whitefield in east Bengaluru, with three big cats being reportedly spotted on the evening of February 9, two days after one large feline was captured, as it entered a school and injured two persons in the locality.

From Gurgaon to Guwahati, Bandhwari to Bengaluru, the growing number of man-animal conflicts, especially in urban areas, is becoming a cause for concern among environmentalists and commoners alike. As urban boundaries grow and the endangered species loses its habitat, the issue is just going to aggravate in times to come.

Problem areas

As per an official of the species and landscapes team at conservationist NGO WWF-India, some of the pressing problems aggravating the man-animal conflict are habitat degradation and infrastructure development. “There is large-scale habitat degradation, with an increasing number of human settlements and construction of resorts, farmhouses and industrial estates. Wild animals like tigers, leopards and elephants have been dispersed in their search for new territories and resources. Affecting this movement is the decreasing wildlife habitat and rapid infrastructure development,” explains the official, who didn’t want to be named.

Gurgaon is a classic example of this. What was just a couple of decades ago an agrarian area offering excellent cover and habitat for elusive felines like leopards has now been converted into a highly dense urban area, with farmhouses, highways and crop fields. A leopard, which might have quietly moved through the landscape without being spotted just a few years ago, has to now pass through human habitation, occasionally straying in search of prey such as dogs and livestock.

“Infrastructure projects, especially highways, are a big concern. These projects impact wildlife by fragmenting habitats and make it difficult for wildlife to move around. Yes, infrastructure is critically important for a developing nation like India, but it’s important that its negative impact be mitigated in a timely manner,” the WWF-India official adds.

As per noted wildlife conservationist and writer Valmik Thapar, leopards are predators that can live in degraded habitats and sometimes even on the edges of cities. “To survive the past two torturous decades, they have done just that, forcing them into frequent conflict with humans, who live in such areas. They go after stray dogs, goats, etc, and, in the process, confront and start attacking humans. Conflicts rise due to flawed government policies on land use. And this has resulted in much of our wilderness vanishing,” he notes.

The numbers game

The country’s first-ever leopard census was conducted by Dehradun-based Wildlife Institute of India (WII), an autonomous institution under the Union ministry of environment and forests, while undertaking a tiger census in 2014. The study estimated that there were about 12,000-14,000 leopards in the wild.

This census captured data for leopards in the Gangetic plains, central India and Western and Eastern Ghats, and did not include figures from non-tiger areas. “Anecdotal evidence and indirect signs from the field point towards a higher number of leopards than tigers, given the fact that the former can adapt to a much larger range of habitats compared to tigers. Leopards are currently estimated to occupy nearly double the area occupied by tigers. A large number of leopards, thus, thrive in human-dominated landscapes or degraded/forest fringe areas,” explains the WWF-India official.

As per Thapar, no accurate all-India census has been done for the animal, which is considered a ‘secondary’ event when tigers get counted. “It is believed that there are four-five times as many leopards than tigers and a ballpark figure could be 8,000-10,000. This is because they can survive in human-dominated areas. Numbers fall each year, as leopard conservation is a subject that few understand, especially forest departments,” he explains.

Agrees Pune-based ecologist Vidya Athreya, who has been working in the field of human-leopard conflict for over 13 years now. “Leopards, like wolves, hyenas and elephants, live extensively outside protected areas in human-use landscapes. Counting them, therefore, is hard, as they are active only at night,” she says, adding, “Additionally, camera traps often get stolen in human-use areas. So there are no reliable numbers.”

The available census figures, however, reveal both good and bad news. The good news is that the census portrays a very healthy number for the endangered big cat. The bad news is that poaching is still contributing to the majority of leopard deaths. “The leopard is one of India’s most trafficked Asian big cats,” says Tito Joseph, programme manager with not-for-profit Wildlife Protection Society of India (WPSI), adding, “In fact, poaching is the main cause for the death of the animal. Organised poaching gangs are involved in these killings.” The issue is further corroborated by a 2012 study by wildlife trade monitoring network Traffic-India that estimated that an average of four leopards are poached every week in India.

The way forward

A comprehensive, country-wide population estimation of leopards is essential to understand the number and distribution of the species in all kinds of terrain, says the official of WWF-India. “Steps taken to manage human-leopard conflict must be based on science, not perception. There is a need to develop a national-level database of conflict incidents, with the objective of understanding the extent of the issue. Holistic awareness programmes should be launched in high-conflict areas to ensure that communities are aware of the basic steps needed to prevent conflict and to immediately report cases of straying leopards to the forest department,” the official adds.

Thapar predicts a very grim picture for the endangered big cat if the correct steps are not taken at the right time. “The authorities concerned—in this case, mainly state governments, as governance is a state subject—have flawed and ad-hoc policies that are not based either on sensible science or good governance,” offers Thapar, adding, “In this despairing climate, the future will be dependent on creating private wildlife reserves managed by local communities or other players, where leopards can thrive with natural food supply away from human footfall. This will prevent human-leopard conflict and encourage wilderness tourism that can boost local economies. Without ideas like these, the leopard has no chance to survive in the future.”