Leopard behavior symptomatic of where wildlife is at
I thank those who have engaged regarding these issues of late. Let's get some clarity.
A lot going on. While focused on mountain work and often away from communication networks, I didn’t write on Substack for a couple of weeks before an email a few days ago to subscribers followed by one to Patrons. There’s been some very interesting responses since, I haven’t got back to everyone yet, I will, I’m just grateful people care about these issues so I thank you.
The email to Patrons centered around the death of Jagatrani Tharu, killed by a leopard the day before. Some people wrote to me expressing their sympathy. The thing is though, I could write something similar many times a month if I was to report on every human fatality after deadly encounters with wild animals. Even with leopards, in fact specifically, if I was to write publicly about the South Asia death toll, it would be like a full time job. Attacks are continual. A day before Jagatrani died a young boy was attacked in Karnataka while on safari, the leopard jumping through a vehicle window. The boy survived but shortly after I clicked send for the Patron’s email on Sunday, eight your old Subash in Madhya Pradesh wasn’t so lucky. The leopard killed him in front of friends at a farm adjacent to his village.
It goes on and on. I have absolutely no doubt new cases will be added to my human - leopard conflict file in the remainder of this week. And next week. And the following. It doesn’t stop. The tiger and elephant incident files will be added to too. In the realm of developing LeopardEye and overall mitigation strategies it’s important to be as current as possible in the understanding of human-wildlife conflict not just in the dynamics of specific incidents but also how the problem fits at any one time in the fabric of communities, those affected. This is where I feel we have a huge problem. The disconnect between those affected and those not affected is relevant to the human condition perhaps like never before as our world seems to lurch from one crisis to another. It’s understandable that a child taken by a leopard, affecting village communities as well as influencing the perceptions of many who have leopards living around them, is very different construct to those of a city dweller in a country where there are no leopards.
Sometimes though, those worlds could potentially collide - but don’t. I’ve briefly described before being on my motorbike early morning travelling to a fatality incident site passing safari jeeps going the other way, with people carrying huge camera lens, excited about their upcoming day in the jungle and the potential it can bring to their Instagram buzz. It’s struck me before the paradox, the disparity, when social media posts describe the magnificence with ChatGPT help of a particular big cat which could very well have taken human lives. That’s in those places. There are other places, many of them, where there are no tourists, only the tragedy adding to already hard lives when a child is taken by a leopard. There’s no one at fault in all this, it’s just the way it is but as someone caught in the middle of a world where big cats are “magnificent” and “shit happens” you can imagine how I see, hear and feel the disparity.
Right now, integrating with LeopardEye, I’m preparing permit applications for sample collections in a high conflict area, specifically leopard scat (but also livestock tissue where leopards have killed domestic animals) which can give information regarding diet, genetics and to me most importantly as it’s something that is given very little attention, stress levels. Part of the text in the application process we are using is the following:
Human Impact: Research has explored the relationship between human presence and stress levels in big cats. A study on tigers in wild reserves found that fecal GCM concentrations increased with higher levels of tourism activity. This highlights how non-invasive methods can be used to inform conservation and management protocols.
The two words in bold are central to this. Human impact obviously takes many forms. It’s very easy and often seen, the anger provoked when there are online posts showing those people with their goofy grins as they stand next to or holding a dead or caught non-human, maybe a leopard, a high country ungulate or a marlin. Trophy hunting and associated activities stir emotions. So do images of the victims of poaching, I’ve measured (results coming in Blood of the Leopard) reactions myself. Had I posted images from a mountain area I was in recently where freshly cut roads serving the building of a new hydro-electric station, the logs from trees I had in previous years walked quietly among, there would have been a more measured response. Had I posted words to the effect of “do you really need to take that flight?” or “do you really need those new clothes?” - there would have been zero response. We measure human impact in ways which suit us, we rarely look in the mirror regarding responsibility.
A child such as Subash or a woman such as Jagatrani, both killed by leopards in the last four days, are typical of those with very little human impact, they are more the result of overall impact by our species. If the leopard which killed Jagatrani has high stress levels as I suspect (the specific border area where the incident took place has seen too many fatalities in both India and Nepal), then this needs to be understood. In the overall context of leopard behavior (this essentially rules my life now), the differing factors determining what a leopard may or may not do in certain circumstances are what ultimately drive the levels of potential human - leopard conflict.
We can go beyond that. We can take the same parameters regarding factor understanding and apply them to our relationship with wildlife in general. Wild animals are in the main marvelously adaptive on our human dominated planet, they’ve had to be. The leopard particularly so. Yet shit still happens and unfortunately with no real likelihood in the human population decreasing, these adaption qualities of wildlife, again especially an animal such as the leopard, are going to be further tested. Every bit of knowledge we can gain now can help prevent those like Subash and Jagatrani, maybe save their lives and thus mean more tolerance and peace in a coexistence challenge which at the moment is extremely intense in too many places.
Over the next few weeks I’ll be going into more specifics on this subject with stories from different leopard habitats including the high Himalaya where I was recently. In the wake of the recent Global Tiger Day there were some interesting publications which I’ll be referring to as well, partly because the relationship between the tiger and the leopard (as well as other predators) has important bearing in this whole paradigm but also partly for other reasons.
In some ways this writing today is a lead in to that but I’m genuine in my thanks to those who do engage, support and seek to understand. We’ve been messing round with nature on a grand scale for a while now but I do have hope of a redress, there’d be no point getting up in the morning and doing what I do otherwise. Our impact on the non-human does take many forms and if we are to truly believe the narrative that we are part of nature and not some counter force, we need to look at our relationship with nature in every way, be it livelihood, adventure, even what we do to achieve wonder, if we really want to have natural balance.
Otherwise there will be more like Subash and Jagatrani bearing the brunt. The ramifications of that are not good for human and non-human alike.
Wildlife matters. Where wildlife is at has never been more important to understand and improve.