March 22, 2013
Wild leopards are expanding their territories in India and encroaching on towns and villages. A new study suggests the animals may become even more menacing than Europe's urban fox.
March 22, 2013
Wild leopards are expanding their territories in India and encroaching on towns and villages. A new study suggests the animals may become even more menacing than Europe's urban fox.
A fully grown male wild leopard bites a net after it fell into a water reservoir tank at a tea estate in Haskhowa, some 28 miles from Siliguri.
India's thriving leopards are expanding their territories into the country's villages and towns and threatening to become a more menacing version of Europe's urban fox, a new study has revealed.
Researchers discovered the big cats are increasingly living close to people's homes where they prey on the large dog and rodent populations found nearby – and, in some places, on the human population too.
Residents of urban villages close to Bollywood's studios in the outskirts of Mumbai have long complained about attacks by leopards. More than a hundred people living close to the city's Sanjay Gandhi National park have been killed or mauled by them in the last ten years.
The new study has finally given proof of what had long been feared: that the leopard is increasingly at home in urban India.
Researchers set up "camera traps" in 40 locations in Ahmednagar district in Maharashtra to catch the range of urban wildlife on film.
Their footage included 81 photographs of leopards, 65 hyenas, 20 jungle cats, three jackals and a fox. They established a population of five adult males, six females in an area of just over a hundred square miles.
One of the researchers, Vidya Athreya, of the 4 Indian Conservation Society, told the Times of India they found leopards would sit in fields less than a few hundred feet from houses – but that at night they would move in close to the buildings "to kill dogs, cats and goats," she said.
"Nowhere in the world have such large numbers of big predators been reported in such densely populated human landscape," she added.
No humans were killed during their study, but there has been an increase on the number of leopard attacks on people throughout India as they live in closer proximity.
Leopards normally avoid direct contact with humans but elderly, ailing or displaced leopards may target humans as easy prey.
Another researcher, Krishna Tiwari, of Mumbai's City Forest Initiative said humans and their livestock were attracting leopards into the towns and cities.
"Sanjay Gandhi National Park is one of the largest parks in the world in terms of being in the heart of the city. We have witnessed severe habitat degradation for the leopards in the past and revival of man-animal conflict since June 2012."
"There is heavy presence of human population and livestock in the area, which is attracting leopards to the these areas. Moreover the areas have been turned into garbage dumps, which has given rise to rodents and pigs and leopards – in absence of food in the park they are getting attracted to the human habitations," he said.
He said there were growing fears that the leopards could start to contract rabies from their increased diet of street dogs.
Courtesy: The Daily Telegraph
