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In John Vaillant's superb book 'The Tiger' he writes of a hunter who says "The tiger will see you one hundred times before you see him once" and anyone who has spent a lot of time in the jungle knows that feeling of being watched. With the even more stealthy and cunning leopard it applies even more and it can be an uneasy feeling, that sense that the big cat is close but concealed in its own realm, a wonder but also powerful force of nature.
Unfortunately the leopard is coming out of hiding more and more. Throughout South Asia the number of conflict situations are increasing as livestock and people sustain injuries or worse. There are more and more scenes like the one posted here but at least this man lived to tell the tale after an attack in Uttarakhand just over the border from western Nepal, we posted re this situation yesterday at WildTiger's Twitter feed.
I'm just back from an area where I learnt of several recent attacks on livestock and dogs. Fortunately there were no attacks on people of late in that location but a valley where there have been several deaths in the last few years is my next stop.
I'll have a more comprehensive update in a few days but a couple of mornings ago I looked up at the sacred mountain Macchapucchre and I felt as if I was getting an almost 7000 metre answer. This mountain has never been climbed, it is sacred, it is a total respect for nature, it is a habitat that is just allowed to be.
While I'm doing a lot of work right now to increase implementation of technology to help mitigate the increasingly more serious issues of human - wildlife conflict, my own focus based on the leopard, I can't help but be convinced that the sacred mountain is simply saying "leave us be, let us have our habitat, return what you have taken and while the relationship between man and nature will never be simple, it can be better than it is right now..."
I'll expand on this thinking soon within the realm of the word SACRED, not in a religious context but with regards to respect, how we must simply let some places be, simply not intrude... at all.
