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It's never ending. A couple of districts away a leopard dragged a 13 year old girl out of bed while she was asleep next to her mother. The leopard managed to get in as the door was open because it was a hot night. A screen door or electricity and a ceiling fan, perhaps the little girl would still be alive. That is the price of poverty. I’ve attended too many cases where poverty has been a factor in where children have lost their lives to leopards.
In the image the leopard was electrocuted possibly after climbing the power pole after being chased by a mob, that is what is being investigated. Leopards inspire fear for many people, once again mostly people who don’t have the resources to be safe.
The image is macabre but I see so much stuff like this I hardly bat an eyelid now. That’s not to say that the deaths of children and of leopards don’t move me, they do, it’s just that it happens so much. We’ve done analysis on the reaction to the image on social media, pitting the story against those where icon species had their plight shown. Needless to say the leopard story stimulated the least reaction. Fodder for my book I can tell you. The death of yet another child won’t bring a flood of messages either.
Back late yesterday afternoon after working in the leopard rehab zone I had to follow up two separate cases of leopard skin seizures in the last 48 hours, both along our latitude of terrain. Illegal wildlife trade, the trafficking of skins and other leopard body parts remains a constant threat. Once again, the anti-poaching effort and emphasis for other species gets support for these efforts much stronger compared to what the leopard and the people living with them receive. Overall human-wildlife conflict mitigation is deemed a much lower priority than anti-poaching, this is wrong, anti-poaching is sexy in the public eyes and many have been duped by ineffective programs. I write these facts from a little village fringing jungle, not a nice office or from a conference or lecture hall. I write these facts from the ground.
I need coffee, the bull elephant did not appear last night but we had to take it in shifts through the night to keep watch, Guruji, Manju, Ram and I, all bleary eyed and watchful. That’s the reality of human-wildlife coexistence. So that’s it from me for now, have to finish reports and then it’s off to dig more holes, twist more wire, build more enclosures… leopards and the people living with them can be protected, it just requires more effort.
