In the image you can see Manju (Anjel) talking to the kids at a neighbouring village about the Living with Leopards program, it was fantastic the way the children from our village took time out to walk to this place to help us explain what we are doing. By the time the afternoon (yesterday) ended about a couple of hundred people were there. Today we will use a projector (depending on electricity at the school there) to explain why the leopard is as important as the tiger. We'll also be getting the early warning system up and running in that area, finding out who needs phones, collecting numbers so that everyone in the village can know when wild elephants are in the area. Slowly but surely we spread our tentacles to increase safety and it was humbling to listen to the concerns of community leaders.
It was also humbling to hear of a woman who sleeps in a cow shed every night so she can protect her livestock, vital family assets... a cow and a couple of goats. It's not really a shed, more like just a thatched roof lean to. The woman is terrified a leopard will take her animals, something which would have a devastating financial effect. I'll find out more about her situation today and see what we can do. Manju is now ready to keep the program running while I am in the field elsewhere, she has done really well, she genuinely cares about her community and I can see that care transferring to the way the kids are reacting.
Poverty sucks, it really does. I can tell you right now that living among these people brings the true raw reality, far away from the "save this, save that" crowd on nice laptops. Living with wild animals means there are safety concerns and when fear strikes after serious conflict then retaliation against wildlife is inevitable unless there is decent support.
I'm a few days out now from my next foray to a place where many children have been killed by leopards, once again poverty a key factor in this tragedy. The honey program for poverty alleviation is on the agenda and we'll be arranging phones and torches and as well I'll help track a leopard which has a police shoot to kill order on it. Ideally it would of course be better if that could be avoided but I don't know what will happen, it's a tense situation, people are living in fear... and I'm going to keep on repeating it: fear breeds retaliation.
It makes me determined. I am determined the Wild Leopard Honey program can eventually bring relief to these areas... for the sake of people and wildlife...
