Winter is coming, big cats too

As the season heralds the start of the mating period of leopards, Uttarakhand gears up to tackle attacks on humans

DEHRADUN/ALMORA: Forty-year-old Maya Devi on the fateful morning of October 24 went to milk her cow as usual, little knowing that death was lurking behind her.

As soon as Devi, a resident of Kotdwar in Pauri Garhwal district, went into the shed, the cow ran towards the forest. As she ran after it, a leopard hiding in the bushes pounced on her, making her another victim of Uttarakhand’s alarming human-leopard conflict. Big cats have killed over 600 people in the past 17 years, on an average 50 people per year, and injured over 3,000. The conflict rate here is the highest in the country, claim activists.

With the onset of winter, which is the mating season for the big cats, the conflict will further deepen, experts say.

“Male big cats (both tigers and leopards) explore newer territories in search of mates due to which human-leopard interaction particularly rises in this season,” K Ramesh of Wildlife Institute of India (WII) told HT.

Though there’s no independent study to establish this trend, scientists say it is a general behaviour of the species. Even villagers share the same concern.

“We do not even fear monsoon when the grass is spread across everywhere but the winter season is toughest,” Sushila Devi, a resident of Rikhnikhal village in Pauri, said. Activists claim 50% of leopard attack incidents are reported in the winter season from October till March.

To avert attacks, villagers now push for installation of more cages in the vicinity where big cats are on prowl. But the Wildlife Protection Act, 1972, they said, often prevents such move.

“The Act empowers the chief wildlife warden to give permission for the cage. But for unintentional attacks — like encounter of women with big cats while they collect grass and fodder inside the forest — we don’t give permission. In such situations, it’s the people who enter the leopard habitat, and not leopards coming to kill them,” Digvijay Singh Khati, chief wildlife warden, told HT.

Nearly 150 leopards have been tagged man-eaters since the formation of the state in 2000. Of them 35 were killed, 40 captured and released, and the status of the rest is unknown. Those captured and released pose a threat as they tend to come back to the area from where they were captured.

An ongoing study of WII conducted in Pauri, which is the worst hit by the conflict, against a similar study in Jalpaiguri and Darjeeling in West Bengal established that the leopard attacks here are triggered due to predation while that in the eastern state is accidental. Forest officers claim a lack of prey base is an important reason behind the conflict but others say encroachment is another issue.

On the lines of Maharashtra, Uttarakhand has also started working on an action plan.