Hounded down

For every tiger killed, six leopards are poached as their skins are in big demand in China.

The leopard wandered into Bahjoi, a village in the Moradabad district of Uttar Pradesh, early this month. It had probably strayed out of the nearby Chandausi range, part of the forests surrounding Rajaji National Park. The villagers, out on their morning ablutions, spotted it, and, scared that it might attack, brought out their lathis and gave it chase. Cornered, the animal scaled a tree but the angry mob soon surrounded it. The leopard jumped down and ran, but got stuck in a barbed-wire fence nearby. The mob swiftly closed in on the hurt animal and beat it to death. Later, the carcass was tied to a cot and paraded around the village.

This was no stray incident. Every year, leopards in large numbers stray into human habitat and are killed with similar brutality —chased by angry mobs, then beaten with sticks or burnt. According to figures from Wildlife Protection Society of India, a well-regarded NGO working in the area of conservation, as many as 300 leopards are killed every year.

Poaching accounts for a majority of leopard deaths. There is a steady international demand for leopard skin and bones. “In China, tiger bones are used in traditional medicines. As the tiger is a protected animal now, it is very difficult to get its bones. Leopards, on the other hand, are easily available. It is also very difficult to tell a tiger bone from a leopard bone. The only difference is that leopard bones are smaller; so poachers sell them as tiger cub bones. Also, in Tibet leopard skin is very popular as it is used in their traditional attire,” says wildlife biologist Vidya Athreya, an authority on leopard conservation.

Surprisingly, there is virtually no market for leopard skins or bones within India, though a leopard skin can fetch between Rs 40,000 and Rs 50,000 in the international market — one-tenth the Rs 4-5 lakh that a tiger skin can fetch. Gujarat and the Indo-Nepal border along Uttarakhand are hotspots for this illegal trade.

In 2010, 180 leopards were reported killed as a result of poaching, according to WPSI. Add to this the number of deaths due to conflict with humans and the number stands at 328, says Tito Joseph, the chief operating officer of WPSI. In the first six months of this year, there have already been 79 deaths reported from poaching, with another 90 killed when the animals had strayed into human habitation — one even walked into actress Hema Malini’s bungalow in suburban Mumbai!

What makes the leopard so vulnerable? Leopards live in and around human-dominated, agricultural areas. This is the root of the conflict, since the leopard — the smallest of the four “big cats” in the genus Panthera, the other three being the tiger, lion and jaguar — often strays into human habitat.

Their food habits also make leopards vulnerable: while tigers are choosy about their prey, leopards will eat anything — cow, pig, dog and even man. Once they turn man-eaters, leopards can be deadly. (Jim Corbett’s maneater of Rudraprayag was a leopard, not a tiger.) Even for breeding, leopards prefer sugarcane fields and not the jungles. “That’s why unlike tigers, leopards prefer to live on the fringes of forests and not in the deep forests,” says the additional principal chief conservator of Gujarat, Harshanker Singh.

According to Jose Louies, assistant manager at Wildlife Trust of India, a not-for-profit organisation, “The habitat of these animals is gradually becoming fragmented. So they often take up residence in croplands and tea-gardens where they easily get livestock. Once spotted, they are attacked by the villagers.” No wonder survival is becoming the biggest challenge for the leopard.

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Unfortunately, even the government does not keep track of them. The leopard is protected under Schedule-I of the Wildlife Protection Act, 1972 but, unlike the tiger, which has demarcated sanctuaries and a well-publicised conservation project, there is no specific government programme for leopards.

“We already have the tiger project. The same principle should be used to protect the leopard. More than a separate project, we need to protect our jungles,” says Hemendra Kothari, the former chairman of DSP Merrill Lynch who now runs the Wildlife Conservation Trust.

Though the species is considered vulnerable, the government has no data on the total number of leopards in the country. A nationwide census is done every four years to check the number of tigers, but there is no such census for leopards. This despite the fact that, in the last 10 years, for every tiger killed, six leopards are being poached, according to WPSI.

“The leopard is not as endangered as the tiger. States conduct their own census on the number of leopards. When we need details, we ask them for data. There is no centralised data on the number,” says A K Srivastava, Inspector General of Forests (under the Union ministry of forest and environment).

Desipte the lack of authentic figures, sources and government officials put the number of leopards in India between 10,000 and 12,000, which makes India home to 50 to 60 per cent of Asia’s 20,000 leopards. China is next with around 2,500 leopards. In India, leopard is found in all states. Uttarakhand has the highest number of leopards at 2,100, followed by Chattisgarh at 1,300, Gujarat at 1,170 and Madhya Pradesh, 1,010.

Compared to only 1,700 tigers remaining in India, the number of leopards may sound high. But left on its own, the problem of man-animal conflict will only worsen, given India’s rapidly-increasing human population. India has over 640,000 square kilometers of forest cover. Of this 400,000 sq km are ideal for leopards. “Our jungles can support about 20,000 leopards if managed properly,” Singh says. “If the government relocates some leopards where the concentration is high to forests where there are fewer of these wild animals, the problem of man-animal conflict can be averted.”

Realising the magnitude of the danger to the leopard, the government formed a committee last year to look into leopard mortality. Set up under the National Tiger Conservation Authority, the committee has recently submitted its recommendations which are the basis for the “Human-Leopard Conflict Management” guidelines issued in April by Union Environment Minister Jairam Ramesh. Creating awareness among the people who live near leopard-infested areas, especially in the hilly states of Uttarakhand, Himachal Pradesh and Jammu & Kashmir, is an important plank of these guidelines, and so is sensitising the media.

Leopards are not usually inclined to attack people, according to the ministry’s guidelines. Mere sighting in the vicinity of human habitations does not mean that the animal has strayed from a forest and needs to be captured; arbitrary removal of leopards can lead to increased conflict, since the space vacated by a captured animal will soon be occupied by another leopard. The other important suggestion is the creation of an “emergency response” team consisting of an officer not below the rank of assistant conservator of forests, a qualified veterinarian, and at least five trained support staff. Then there are guidelines for crowd management, and how the captured animal should be handled.

The guidelines recommend the involvement of locals. It makes provisions for villagers to be given subsidy for leopard-proof livestock sheds and vaccination camps for livestock. “We have observed that villagers whose livestock were attacked once by leopards are less tolerant towards the animal. So in the guidelines we have included the point that in case of attacks on livestock, ex-gratia amount should be provided within a week. Now it is up to state governments to implement these” says Athreya who has worked on the guidelines with the ministry.