Leopard on loose: Encounters with wildlife warning of accelerating crisis

Samar Halarnkar, Hindustan Times
New Delhi, February 26, 2014

Leopard in Meerut -- Chahat (HT photo)

 

Markets and schools were shut. Stay indoors, said the administration. The army was alerted. Uttar Pradesh’s Meerut, a city of more than 3 million people, is used to curfews, primarily over sectarian clashes. But Monday’s curfew, although it was not so declared, was over something quite extraordinary: A terrified male leopard that had mauled five people.

In the absence of a tranquiliser gun, policemen chased the animal with lathis, as did photographers with cameras and sundry men who thought it was a manly, exciting thing to do.

While Meerut stayed home because of the unfortunate leopard, another curfew-like situation was being enforced 370 km to the southeast in the villages of Bijua in the district of Lakhimpur Kheri.


A tiger that had killed a man and mauled another had taken residence in the area’s sugarcane fields. As I write this, in more remote parts of eastern UP, another tiger has shut down villages across four districts. Nine people are dead, and professional hunters have tried — and failed — to find her.

Curfews involving animals are not new to India. In 1925-26, the great hunter Jim Corbett found villages in the Himalayan foothills of Garhwal in thrall of a leopard that had killed 120 men and women.

Corbett wrote: “No curfew order has ever been more strictly enforced, and more implicitly obeyed, than the curfew imposed by the man-eating leopard of Rudraprayag.”

In 1996, while touring the lush valleys of Pauri-Garhwal, I had a ring-side view of a leopard-enforced curfew. Houses were sealed every night, and children were counted before bed, after 10 leopards — declared “maneaters” — had killed 30 humans over 10 months.

Uttarakhand (then Uttar Pradesh) was well educated, so there was no argument about what had killed these people (although many said these were not “our leopards” but animals trucked in surreptitiously from the plains). However, in the arid, low-literacy expanses of eastern UP that year, mass hysteria developed when babies disappeared.

It was the manai, villagers insisted, a man-creature who could leap over buildings, snatch children from the arms of parents and fly silently through the night with a headlamp fixed to its head (I am serious). Frenzied mobs lynched at least 30 people accused of being the manai. It later emerged that wolves forced out their habitat had carried away the missing children.

Growing proximity between human and animal has always been the prime reason for India’s violent, unfortunate encounters with its wildlife. But the post-1990 economic boom brought them closer than ever.

Read: Leopard injures three in Moga; killed by villagers
 
Since 1990, nearly 4 million hectares of forests have been lost. Every month, more than 40 sq km of forests are officially handed over to mines, factories, dams and power plants, according to one conservative calculation by Delhi’s Environment Impact Assessment Resources and Response Centre, an advocacy group.

The most recent scandal is a vigorous effort by politicians and religious leaders in Kerala and Karnataka to prevent any kind of protection to one of the most biologically important places on earth, the Western Ghats.

The irony is that in some recent years, India’s forest area has increased — officially. This is because of plantations and what is called compensatory afforestation, artificial stands that cannot replace the dense, diverse forests where animals and plants are locked in an intricate, interdependent cycle of life.

When that cycle breaks, habitat loss accelerates. So, there will only be more curfews, violence and violent deaths — sometimes of people but mostly of animals. Almost every day, local newspapers and television channels across India report elephants, leopards, tigers and even armadillos pursued by mobs, caught in bloody traps, beaten or poisoned to death, or run over by vehicles and trains.

The pressure on forests and animals will increase, especially at a time of slowing economic growth and waning enthusiasm for wildlife. It is also clear that prosperity is not helping. Driven by increasing mobility and expanding highways, Indians are vacationing like never before. They also work harder than ever, and as they do, they are more removed from the great outdoors, accustomed now to the idea that wildlife exists on the Discovery Channel or Animal Planet or zoos and national parks — to be gawped at or teased.

Animals as objects of entertainment are a disturbing feature of emerging India. In the south, where elephant-human conflicts are depressingly common, elephants that blunder out of their receding forest homes are often teased and harried by excited mobs. Last year, a couple of terrified, juvenile elephants that blundered into the city of Mysore were pursued by townsfolk and in turn pursued them.
In the five years to November 2013, 150 elephants died from human contact, as opposed to 144 from natural causes, according to the data from the Wildlife Protection Society of India, an advocacy group. It also says nearly 4,000 leopards were killed over nine years to 2013, a figure that the Customs authorities multiply by 10 to estimate poaching data.

Meerut’s leopard made national headlines because it emerged in a teeming industrial city, which has long done away with forests. Panthera pardus, the leopard, epitomises India’s unfolding environmental catastrophe. It is nature’s great survivor, adapting to humans like no other predator, hunting everything from chicken to rodents to dogs. It frequents tea gardens, farms, towns, even the claustrophobic suburbs of Mumbai, where it is known to scale the walls of condominiums or take a nap under buses. The rising number of close encounters is a warning of the India’s accelerating environmental crisis.

A popular children’s book that I read to my three-year-old at bedtime has a story about Mumbai’s suburban leopards. An autorickshaw called Toto finds a little, lost leopard and persuades his driver Pattu to restore the cub to its parents. “Pattu, he’s a cub,” says Toto to his wary driver. “Don’t worry, I’ll find a way.” That, it would appear, is increasingly unlikely.

Samar Halarnkar is a Bangalore-based journalist.

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When leopard meets man: Photos of big cats at close quarters

HT Correspondent, Hindustantimes.com  New Delhi, February 25, 2014

A leopard sparked panic in Uttar Pradesh’s Meerut when it strayed into a hospital, a movie theatre and an apartment complex while evading people who were trying to capture the big cat. The local administration closed down schools and colleges in the city after the prowling leopard injured several people in the past three days.


February 23, 2014: A leopard breaking out of a cemented window at the Meerut Cantonment Hospital, in which it was locked down. Still on the loose, the cat has injured seven people. (Chahatram/Hindustan Times)

related story

 

Leopard injures 3 in Moga; killed by villagers

The same leopard leaps across an under-construction structure near a furniture market in the Degumpur residential area in Meerut. The big cat has sparked panic in the city after straying inside a hospital, a cinema and an apartment block before evading captors.  (Chahatram/Hindustan Times)
This, however, is not the first instance of a big cat coming face to face with humans in an urban setting. Several incidents in the past have raised concerns about the depleting habitats for big cats, which is forcing them into populated areas.

We show you a collection of photos of past incidents of leopards at close quarters with man:


February 10, 2014: A leopard being shot dead by the army after the cat attacked a patrolling party at a village in south Kashmir's Anantnag district. (Photo with special arrangement. Greater Kashmir/Sajad Muniwardi)



Pictures of a leopard sitting on a wall near an industrial area in Ranipur range of Rajaji National Park. (Amit Verma/Hindustan Times)

April 4, 2013: A leopard looking up from within a well in a residential area of Guwahati, before being tranquilsed and taken to Guwahati Zoo. The fully grown cat caused a major scare in the area. (AFP Photo)


March 30, 2013: Forest guards carrying a leopard after tranquillising the animal in a residential area near Kalipur in Guwahati. The cat was wandering through a part of the densely populated city when curious crowds startled the animal. (AFP Photo)


June 20, 2012: A male leopard bites a net after falling into a water reservoir tank at a tea estate in Haskhowa, around 45km from Siliguri. The animal was rescued by the Sukna Forest rescue team from the Mahananda Wildlife sanctuary by lowering a ladder and a net into the tank. (AFP Photo)

January 27, 2012: A leopard being kept in a cage at the Assam state zoo after it was captured in Lakhara area of Guwahati. The leopard mauled two people including a pregnant woman after straying into the city. (AFP Photo)


January 7, 2012: A leopard attacking a labourer in a residential neighbourhood of Silphukhuri area in Guwahati. Three people were seriously injured in the leopard attack before the feline was tranquilised and taken to Assam state zoo. (AFP Photo)


January 07, 2012: The leopard, which attacked the labourer (right) in a residential colony in Guwahati, being taken away after being tranquillised by zoo officials. (PTI Photo)


January 7, 2012: A photo of the leopard being carried away after being tranquilised. (AFP Photo)


July 19, 2011: A forest guard aiming his rifle after being attacked by a leopard at Prakash Nagar village near Salugara on the outskirts of Siliguri. Six people were mauled by the leopard after it strayed into the village. (AFP Photo)


July 19, 2011: The same leopard attacks another forest guard at the village. It was caught by forestry department officials later. (AFP Photo)


March 4, 2010: A leopard being carried away after it was rescued from the residential area of Kahilipara in Guwahati by zoological officials who took it to Assam state zoo. (AFP Photo)


March 28, 2009: An Assam state zoo veterinarian carrying a tranquilised leopard from a well in a village on the outskirts of Guwahati. The leopard was later taken to the Guwahati Zoo. (AFP Photo)


March 15, 2009: A leopard walking with a tranquiliser dart in his neck in the residential area of Jyotikuchi in Guwahati. Three people were mauled by the cat after it strayed into the city before it was tranquilised by forestry department officials. The leopard was wandering through a densely populated area when it came face to face with the locals. (AFP Photo)


03 February 2007: A forest department official carrying a leopard after it was tranquilized in Guwahati. The cat mauled three people after straying into the city. (AFP Photo)

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