This post is at Facebook (along with other updates) if you wish to comment.
Another long night and still not able to get into the right position to test tiger audio. I'll update when it happens but hopefully it will be another string to the bow.
It's about taking ownership of problems and dealing with them with focus. Re the elephant conflict there are good people coming on board and the Chief Warden has done a lot within his resource capacity. I'm looking forward to what Roshan can do next when he is able to give Bardia more time.
But that's elephants which are in the main a revered species. Leopards aren't held in the same regard, retaliation killings are a huge problem. Info yesterday about an attack on a man by a leopard in one of the areas I spend time worried me because I know the stress it will cause. The death of the 70 year old woman in Gujarat was all the more tragic because it could have been avoided.
My post below (which linked to the full post on Facebook) in many ways summed up the frustration at the lack of focus and support for the problem. I have contact with leopard conservationists the world over and we all lament the same problem, lack of support. This region here through the middle hill belt from central/west Nepal through Uttarakhand, UP and Bihar is the area of the most intense human-big cat conflict on the planet.
Above all this problem needs more passion and courage from the 3 sectors I mentioned in the post (Facebook) yesterday, that translates into care. More and more the line that the leopard could go extinct before the tiger is being vocalized but the response is mute.
I'm done talking about it for now. I'm pulling in good people with passion and courage, it is a time to let go of those without those attributes. As a species we're getting closer and closer to putting people on Mars, that's incredible, a testament to our ingenuity. But as wildlife conservationist I would like to see more support for the marginalized on our planet, the leopard and the people living with them symbolize that...
