With the leopard population in the country dropping to 11,000, a worried environment minister Jairam Ramesh has shot off a letter to chief ministers asking them to create a trained response team to prevent their extinction as happened in the case of the cheetah. The guidelines issued stress that leopards, like other large carnivores, are shy of humans and will avoid them in most cases, to prey on dogs and pigs.
“Man-leopard conflicts arise when leopards start preying on livestock causing severe economic losses to local communities. This conflict intensifies when these animals turn man-eaters," the letter to the chief minister states. Recent scientific studies on leopards in human-dominated landscapes show that capture-translocation is an ineffective way of dealing with them since many animals can traverse through densely populated landscapes to reach back to their original territories.Read full report here.
Source: Correspondent, Deccan Chronicle, New Delhi.
