SURGICAL STRIKE?

Maharashtra has some 1,700 of India’s 13,000 leopards, the third-highest population of the big cat after Madhya Pradesh (3,421) and Karnataka (1,783).

- Dhaval Kulkarni

And, in an additional but troubling nuance recorded by the exhaustive report called the ‘Status of Leopards, Co-predators and Mega Herbivores in India 2018’, around 65 per cent of them live outside protected areas like wildlife sanctuaries, national parks and tiger projects. This presence in human-dominated areas makes them vulnerable. Even in this unregulated state—call it a default to nature—leopards do lend a helping hand to humans by preying on feral cattle and wild boar that raid standing crops of farmers. But the larger frame is that of conflict: since 2017, official lists record 113 people as having been killed in leopard attacks. A solution had to be found one way or the other.

State forests minister Sudhir Mungantiwar says a committee constituted by the forest department to look into miti gating human-leopard conflict is looking into a few options, including this one—sterilisation. Legislators from the affected areas, he adds, are amenable to the idea too. A senior official of the forest department says, “We will see if sterilisation can be done with the existing resources, and if it will be an effective measure.” The feasibility study will be completed in a month’s time. The prime challenge will be identifying the carnivores prone to attacking humans and capturing them.