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Just over a week ago a leopard entered a hut in Gujarat. The cat snatched a sleeping four year old girl. Forest Officers found the partially eaten body several hours later and while there was a fleeting sign of the leopard not far from where it left its kill, there was every indication it left the area not long after the officers removed the child's body.
This was a premeditated strike, a calculated hunt and as much as it is awful to write it, an easy kill for one of nature's supreme predators. I wont go into further detail on this event but it is just one of many similar I have in my files. It is sobering. I remember the first time I spoke to a family who had lost a loved one to a tiger in Sumatra, the quiet tears as they recalled the horror. I rarely share this type of information, it is in the main very private, a respect for those involved but it is of course something that needs to be discussed and examined among researchers with the outcome of improved mitigation the aim.
So far this year in India a disturbing amount of leopard skins have been seized. As I've mentioned before, each seizure only represents a proportion of the loss. In human - leopard conflict there is tragedy on both sides. There is also major economic impact when goats, sheep, yaks, buffaloes or any livestock are taken. As leopards adapt to an ever changing environment they will do what they need to do to survive. In the main they will stay away from us, it is obvious they don't want to interact. But the more we destroy their natural habitats and reduce natural prey, leopards and other top predators compensate and conflict is often the result.
There will always be conflict but we're now at a stage where our understanding of leopard behaviour has to be constantly improving so that we can put more preventative measures in place so as to minimize the amount of tragedies such as the recent one in Gujarat.
At the Owl Festival in Sikles I took time to talk to a few locals (thanks Naresh for the photo), get an overview of conflict in their area. I will return to the area in a few weeks while traversing valleys from the point where I lived with the leopard Asa. I'll do anything I can to increase my understanding. I'm a conservationist but I'm also a father.
I wrote recently about the need for perceptions to change. Conservation and conflict go hand in hand but it worries me the beliefs and misconceptions I hear and read, not just from people living in areas with potentially dangerous wildlife but also from the keyboards of those far away. There needs to be more balanced perspective based on the understanding that yes, big cats are magnificent examples of wildlife, so important in many ways but they are also natural born killers that think differently to us.
Most of the last two days I have been immersed in getting information regarding recent serious conflicts. I balanced myself by editing some photos of people at the Owl Festival (see posts at Facebook), a community living in leopard country. It's all very linked as we try to find ways of living with wildlife in the world we are changing drastically. Wildlife behaviour is changing alongside our environmental impact, we must do our best to keep evolving our understanding.
The second image I posted here represents our sometimes distorted thinking. When I lived with the leopard Asa in the snow I realized how little I knew yet I devote my life to this. It's impossible not to feel deeply for the family in Gujarat, tragedy can provide motivation to improve.
But it needs to be done properly. So now I put my boots back on and go and do that...
