The Leopards of Akole - 5

This if the final of a five part series on the Leopards of Akole in the Akole Taluka of the Ahmednagar District of Western Maharashtra

The earlier stories can be read at:
1) Man-Animal Row: Study holds vital clues
2) Akole's leopards have hardly jumped humans
3) How did the leopards get to Akole?
4) Conflict in Junnar is due to relocation

UNDERSTANDING AKOLE'S UNUSUAL PHENOMENON
by Pankaj Sekhsaria

epaper.dna.net (Pune edition), February 20, 2009, Page 5

Vidya Athreya is the principal investigator of the ongoing project to study and understand the presence of leopards and their behaviour in human-dominated agricultural landscapes of western Maharashtra. Akole taluka in Ahmednagar district is the present field site of her project that has been going on for over two years. These are excerpts from an interview discussing various dimensions and challenges of her work.

Vidya Athreya (on the right) talking to farmers in Akole to understand their perceptions of the leopards in their farmlands (Pic: Pankaj Sekhsaria)

How did you get interested in studying the leopards of western Maharashtra?
It began in 2003 when we moved to the Giant Meterwave Radio Telescope campus of the National Centre for Radio Astronomy in Narayangaon. My husband, Ramana Athreya is an astronomer. This region was most affected by the leopard human conflict. There were attacks every two weeks. Many leopards that were captured had not actually attacked humans, but had been sighted or had killed livestock. I was fascinated and keen to understand how these big cats lived in croplands, close to human settlements without any significant problems.

Your biggest challenges in your research
On the field, it is the large number of people you have to deal with. A lot of time and energy is spent talking to people and explaining what we are doing. I have also been lucky to get support from the forest department, both at the state and the local level. Project supervisors Ulhas Karanth and Sukumar have also given me complete freedom in my work. The biggest challenge has been to get the media interested. A leopard living without attacking people is not what many want to write about. They are interested in writing about it when there is a problem. This is perhaps, causing the greatest harm to the conservation of this species.

What are the larger lessons?
There are three important ones:
Significant wildlife exists outside our sanctuaries and national parks (protected areas); we have a very unique situation in India where local people are still extremely tolerant of wildlife in their surroundings and conservation in India is viewed entirely through a protected area lens.
Now the conservation community has to start working with the local people. Also their tolerance is diminishing rapidly due to many factors and it would end up being a great loss.
We have no clue that so much wildlife exists outside protected areas and management decisions are generally inappropriate for these non-protected areas or non-forest areas.

Your experience with the local people
I have thoroughly enjoyed my work. The India I knew seems so disconnected from rural India. Yet one can sit in their house, chat about things and have a cup of tea. That has been amazing. The other thing is how politically powerful rural India is compared to urban areas (with the exception of Delhi, perhaps) and how politicians use all kinds of means to get their votes. That has been an eye-opener

Insights from interacting with local people
A lady told me that she had been seeing me coming regularly for my camera trapping work and was interested in the animals and had grown curious about the leopards herself. But, she said, she did feel occasionally scared as she had a little son.
Now, I knew that there was a leopard moving around in the vicinity as I had seen pugmarks just behind her house. I almost could not sleep that night wondering what would happen if the boy was attacked

Vidya explaining the workings of the camera trap to gathering of village children (Pic: Pankaj Sekhsaria

Your family's reactions
The toughest part has been leaving behind my eight-year-old daughter to go out into the field. But both she and my husband have been remarkably supportive and I am grateful to them. My daughter asked me why leopards do not attack people who are studying them.

Any particular challenges
The biggest challenges have been from a few male colleagues who appreciate what I am doing, but cannot handle the fact that a woman is doing this, doing it well and alone. That I have to face this in this day and age, although not surprising in our intrinsically conservative male dominated society, rankles.

The response from government agencies
The forest department has been of great help from the beginning. Be it the local staff or the senior officers, they have been very appreciative and have always shown great interest.

Your next step in studying the leopards
One of the biggest tasks before me is to educate farmers, local and state-level media, urban public, managers and policy makers about the complexities. We want to use global positioning system collars on the leopards to see how close they come to humans. We know they have many opportunities to attack, but don't and we want to understand this better.

Contact Vidya Athreya: Email: phatrosie@gmail.com


Three leopard safaris for state

The Central Zoo Authority (CZA) has approved a proposal of the Maharashtra State Government for setting up leopard safaris in three different parts of the state. These are to come up near Belwandi in Ahmednagar district, at Manikdoh in Pune district and at Sanjay Gandhi National Park, Mumbai.
60 leopards captured from various parts of the state will be rehabilitated in the safaris, the first of which will come up in the Ahmednagar district. The state government expects to spend Rs. 10 crores for the establishment of these safaris.

The leopards of Akole - 4

CONFLICT IN JUNNAR IS DUE TO RELOCATION
Moving the leopards away from their home is the very root of the problem it seeks to solve

BY
Pankaj Sekhsaria
epaper.dna.net (Pune Edition), February 19, 2009, Page 5

To understand the serious incidents in Junnar involving big cats attacking humans, we need to go back to 2003. It was the time when the human-leopard conflict had peaked.

Leopards were being captured in cages in an effort to deal with the problem. Trapping leopards has, for long, been the main response to deal with a conflict situation. It is also one way of showing that action is indeed being taken. This becomes particularly relevant when there are human attacks and demand from the public, the politicians and the media to do something mounts. It happened in Junnar and continues to happen in a number of other places too.
The recent case of shooting down the wrong tiger in Tadoba Tiger Reserve is a classic case of wrong decisions being taken under intense media glare and political pressure.
As far as Junnar is concerned, a team of researchers that included Vidya Athreya and Pune-based veterinarian Anirudh Belsare had started working on getting a scientific understanding of the cause of the increased conflict.
A part of their effort was to mark and electronically tag these problem animals. This was done by inserting a small rice grain sized chip at the point where the animals' tails are attached to the body. The chips are uniquely numbered and can be read like a barcode is in the supermarket. Since captured leopards at that point were being released into other areas with potentially thick forests, it was hoped that the tagging exercise would help in tracking them once they were set free.

The microchip being inserted into the body of a tranquilised leopard (Pic: Vidya Athreya)

A microchip amidst grains of rice gives an idea of its size (Pic: Vidya Athreya)

A number of these tagged leopards were moved 400 km to the Yawal wildlife sanctuary in Jalgaon district like they were to other parts of the state. They were subsequently released into these forests.
Yawal's forests have always had leopards but there were never any reports of attacks on humans. There was surprise and huge fear then, when villages in and around the forests, experienced a sudden and vicious spate of leopard attacks towards the end of 2003.

The female leopard that was caught in Yaval (Pic: Vidya Athreya)

A girl that was attacked by a leopard in Yaval (Pic: Vidya Athreya)

The two-month period stretching from October 31 to December 24 saw six attacks in a region that had absolutely no such history. The attacks stopped only when trap cages were put in place and two leopards were caught. What was striking about both these leopards, one male, the other female, was that these were Junnar leopards that had been released here just a few weeks ago. The chips inserted before their release had confirmed this fact. Movement of captured leopards from the area of conflict had in fact helped move the conflict to the new areas and significantly, to where it had never existed. This was not an isolated case.

Junnar and Yaval. The star shows the point about 70 kms from Yaval towards Junnar where the released leopard was recaptured (Pic: Vidya Athreya)

It was becoming increasingly clear that the huge problem of human-leopard conflict that seemed to be spreading all over was essentially, a human created one. Athreya wrote almost immediately to the chief wildlife warden of the state that they were now certain that nearly all the cases of conflict and attack on humans that had occurred across the state from 2001 to 2004 were indeed due to the translocation that had preceded them.
Translocation which was being considered a simple answer and in use all over India, in fact, lay at the very root of the problem it sought to solve. It is only with the benefit of hindsight, we can now say we should have been more careful. Hopefully, the lessons have been learnt and the same mistakes will not be made again. There certainly are other contributory factors, some known and others that have still to be uncovered, but one key causative factor has certainly been understood. The earlier work that led to critical understanding of the problem in Junnar is an excellent example of that, as is the present effort at understanding the leopards of Akole and its behaviour.
We might not know all the causes that could push the Akole situation in a Junnar- like direction; but we can now say with confidence that we know of at least a critical few. The least we should ensure is that we don't repeat the mistakes of the past.

Tomorrow: Interview with Vidya Athreya

Box 1
Wrong tiger was killed

In a recent response to an application filed under the Right to Information Act (RTI), the Maharashtra Forest Department (FD) admitted that the wrong tiger was killed as a man-eater in the Tadoba forests in 2007.
The FD reply stated that it had acted in haste under political pressure and points to letters it received from local politicians who had threatened to agitate and even kill the man-eater themselves.
Villagers had complained in October 2007 that a tigress was killing people and cattle in and around the Tadoba-Andhari Tiger Reserve. The FD began a hunt in November but failed to capture the animal. Local politicians then turned up the heat. During a subsequent operation, the officials sighted a tiger eating its kill. The team fired 39 bullets, of which 12 had hit the mark.


Box 2
Conflict moved
A small boy was attacked in the Radhanagari WLS in Kolhapur district in February 2004 by a leopard. The leopard suffered a serious injury (broken skull) when it was assaulted by the father in defense of his child. The animal was trapped by the Forest Department and was identified by its chip as the female that had been captured in Narayangaon (Pune District) in March 2003 and released in the Radhanagari forests a year later in February 2004. The attack had occurred a day after she had been released and less than 5 km from her release site.
Similarly another individual that was caught in Sangamner and inserted with a chip was released in Mumbai’s Sanjay Gandhi National Park only to be recaptured in a Thane marriage hall a few weeks later.

Box 3
Animals Return
It is now well known that large carnivores like bears, leopards and tigers have a very strong homing tendency and they instinctively try to return to the area that they had been moved from. There are instances of the cougars, a leopard sized wild cat found on the American continent, having traveled over 400 kms back to their site of capture to resume livestock depredation. Closer home, a ‘problem leopard’ caught 120 km away and released inside the Nagarhole National Park in Karnataka in 1990 had immediately moved out of the park. Another ‘problem leopard’ captured in Gujarat and translocated 30 kms away was fitted with a radio collar. It was found to immediately return to its earlier territory and resume livestock depredation. Even the Yawal leopard had moved nearly 90 kms in the direction of Junnar from the site of her release in side the Yawal Wildlife Sanctuary before she was captured the second time
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The other stories that are part of the series can be seen at

1) Man-Animal Row: Study holds vital clues
2) Akole's leopards have hardly jumped humans
3) How did the leopards get to Akole?
4) Conflict in Junnar is due to relocation
5) Understanding Akole's unusual phenomenon

The leopards of Akole - Part 3

This is the 3rd of the five part series on the leopards of Akole.

HOW DID THE LEOPARDS GET TO AKOLE

Leopards were always here. The sugarcane crop is a good breeding and hiding ground for the big cats

PANKAJ SEKHSARIA
epaper.dna.com (Pune Edition), February 18, 2009, Page 5

There is one big question that seems to lie at the very root of this entire issue. How did the leopard get into a primarily agricultural landscape with a big human population like Akole? The answer is as unexpected as the question is obvious. The leopards were always there, the only change being that their numbers may have increased over the years.
Several related factors can explain the rather sharp rise of leopard numbers in these parts of western Maharashtra and the many cases of conflict. The most important dimension, perhaps is the change in land use across this belt. Leopards were always found here, though records indicate that the dominant predator here was the wolf, an animal that essentially dominates scrub forest and open grassland regions.
Increase in area under agriculture has pushed the wolf to the margins and the spread of sugarcane created an ideal situation for the leopard to establish itself and spread its presence. The height of the sugarcane and the fact that it is a long duration crop (11 months) allows these fields to become good breeding and hiding grounds for big cats like the leopard and even the tiger. There have been reports in recent times, for instance, of tigresses giving birth in sugarcane fields adjoining forests in the Terai regions of Uttar Pradesh.

Personnel from the Forest Department noting the details of a leopard attack on a goat in the Malizhap village in Aloke Taluka (Pic: Pankaj Sekhsaria)

With no competition and easy prey available in the form of stray dogs, cattle, pigs and chicken among others it is not surprising that the leopard spread and established itself strongly across large parts of Akole taluka. In the initial years however, locals point out, that the numbers were neverlarge and sightings were very occasional, even rare.

Goats form an important part of the diets of leopards here and local residents have now started taking special care to protect their animals (Pic: Pankaj Sekhsaria)

According to Ashok Ghule, a local farmer and employee of the forest department, the situation changed noticeably around 2003. This is when attacks on dogs and other domestic animals experienced an increase and locals also started reporting leopards regularly and in a manner that had never happened in the past. The leopard had clearly established itself and if anything Athreya's camera trapping project has provided irrefutable proof of what was a well-known reality.

There is another crucial element that Athreya brings into the discussion. "It is important to note,'' she points out, "that India is the only country in the world where high densities of people (more than 300 per sq. km on the average) and the highest livestock density in the world share their spaces with carnivores. We have still retained all (58 species in all, 14 species more than 10 kg and which can potentially be dangerous to humans) except the cheetah. Total elimination was never part of our culture."

A large number of locals come across as extremely tolerant towards the animal. While they worry and want their security, they are not demanding it at the cost of the leopard. "The tribal communities in the area are the most tolerant. The leopards, they say, are like the wind in the forest. Let them be. They also need food. Let them have it," said Ghule.
It is this ethic that needs to be examined more carefully and might have a partial explanation for the relatively successful co-existence that one sees in Akole. The comparison, even contradiction this is bound to immediately throw up, however, is the situation in neighbouring Junnar.
The conflict that peaked here in 2003 hit national headlines. Close to 50 people were attacked or killed by leopards in two years, and more than 100 leopards were captured for permanent incarceration from a landscape that was very similar to an Akole today.

The project research team visits a site in Ambad village where a goat had reportedly been picked up by a leopard the earlier day (Pic: Pankaj Sekhsaria)

If this happened in Junnar just a few years ago, why can it not happen in Akole in the near future. The answer is a difficult one to give, but one step might be to reverse the question. If nothing unsavoury has happened in Akole for so many years, why did Junnar suffer so badly just a few years ago. There must be more than that which meets the eye.

Tomorrow: Why is Junnar a conflict zone?

Box 1
The changing landscape of Akole Taluka:

The last two-three decades has seen significant change in cropping patterns, thanks mainly to the availability of more water. A dry and arid landscape that supported only marginal and rainfed agriculture has changed drastically with the digging of more bore-wells, installation of pump sets and commissioning of lift irrigation schemes.
A region that could only grow less water intensive crops like Bajra, harbara and wheat now has a huge output of water guzzling crops like vegetables, flowers and importantly sugarcane. Availability of electricity and diesel to lift water has been an important contributor. “Take the example of Takli itself,” says Ashok Ghule, farmer and resident of Takli village. “In the early 70s,” he points out, “Takli did not have more than 10 pumps to pull up water. Now this village alone has at least 500. There has been a three times increase in agricultural land in Akole taluka in the last twenty years,” he adds, “and sugarcane too has increased significantly.” An important catalyst for this was the setting up in 1991 Of the Agasti Co-operative Sugar in Akole town. The demand for sugarcane increased and area under this low maintenance and high returns crop also increased over time.

Box 2: Leopard attacks in different parts of Maharashtra: 2001-2004

This included eight cases in Chalisgaon in Jalgaon district (– September to December 2004); the 50 and more very well publicized cases in the Sanjay Gandhi National Park, Mumbai (May to August 2004); the killing of one girl in Chinchkhed in Nashik district in August 2004; the death of another child in the Radhanagari Wildlife Sanctuary in Kolhapur district in February 2004; the six attacks in Yawal Wildlife Sanctuary and the nearly 50 cases that occurred in the Junnar Forest Division between 2001 and 2003.

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The other stories that are part of the series can be seen at
1) Man-Animal Row: Study holds vital clues
2) Akole's leopards have hardly jumped humans
3) How did the leopards get to Akole?
4) Conflict in Junnar is due to relocation
5) Understanding Akole's unusual phenomenon

The leopards of Akole - Part 2

This is the 2nd part of the five part series on the Leopards of Akole
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AKOLE'S LEOPARDS HAVE HARDLY JUMPED HUMANS

THE Beasts walk past their homes to kill goats and bring up cubs in the fields, but have not attacked villagers

(The leopards of Akole - 2)
epaper.dna.com (Pune Edition), February 17, 2009

by
Pankaj Sekhsaria

Leopards are present in several parts of Akole taluka. There are regular, though fleeting sightings of the cats. Goats and dogs are regularly picked up and pugmarks are easy to spot.
But beyond the obvious, there is a complete lack of knowledge, information and understanding. Nobody really knows how many leopards are actually present, their behaviour pattern, their territory and their movements.

These questions were part of an innovative field biology project to study the leopard in Akole. Supported by Kaati Trust, Pune, the Centre for Wildlife Studies and Centre for Ecological Sciences from Bangalore and the state forest department, the study has been going on for over two years. The first key results are beginning to emerge. "The initial challenge, has been to get a definite knowhow on leopard numbers in the 300 sq km of research area," says team member Athreya. It began with rigorous surveys of the region on foot and by road to get a basic assessment of the landscape and an idea of the areas and pathways most likely to be used by the animals. Satellite imageries and Google maps were also used to fine-tune the exercise.
This was then followed by extensive collection of scats for DNA studies. The analysis at a laboratory in Bangalore will give an idea of the numbers of leopards and importantly of the composition of its prey base.
Another important part of the study has been an intensive camera trapping exercise where self-triggered cameras were deployed to get the pictures of the desired animals. Twenty pairs of cameras were installed for a period of about 15 days in an area of about 70 sq km followed by their relocation to an adjoining block for another fortnight.
The cameras were installed in carefully identified spots just before Diwali and it was around Christmas that the exercise was finally completed. A lot depended on this exercise and the research team could not have asked for a better new year's gift.

Self triggered camera traps were set up across the landscape to get photographs of the leopards

(Pic: Pankaj Sekhsaria)

The cameras had clicked pictures of 14 different leopards - five adult males, five adult females and four cubs. While a statistical analysis is now being undertaken to get a realistic estimate, it is clear from the sheer number of animals photographed that the leopard population here is indeed large.
Taken beyond the confines of the immediate context, the Akole scenario throws up critical challenges to our notion of large carnivore biology and behaviour and the very controversial and emotional subject of man-wildlife conflict.
The leopards of Akole have lived in close proximity to the humans for at least a decade. They regularly walk past their houses, pick up goats from sheds adjoining the homes and give birth and bring up their families in fields only a few meters away. Yet, there have been no attacks on humans and no strident calls for killing or removal of the big cats either.
The information and the insights being thrown up now, could not only force us to change our understanding of leopard behaviour. In understanding what is actually happening, it may equip us better to deal with problem situations that may arise in the future. A large part of what we believe is our understanding of the leopard, the causes of conflict or the solutions that we have tried to apply, have in fact been based on perceptions and opinions. Wrong decisions often therefore get taken for right reasons and the value of and need for good science becomes all the more relevant in such a context.

A typical cattle shed that can be seen in the villages of Akole Taluka. In the background are the sugarcane fields that are favoured by leopards (Pic: Pankaj Sekhsaria)


A goatherd takes his goats along. Goats and dogs form an important part of the diet of the leopards of Akole

(Pic: Pankaj Sekhsaria)

Tomorrow: How did the leopards get to Akole

Box 1
Locating Akole in a national context

While the Akole situation seems rather unprecedented and unbelievable, the reality across large parts of the Indian subcontinent actually confirms that Akole may not be an isolated case. For long we’ve believed in India that wildlife (even of the big and dangerous kind) lives only in forests and that is where they should be restricted. A whole range of wild animals like elephants, leopards, wolves, hyena not to speak of reptiles and avi-fauna are found outside areas designated as wildlife sanctuaries and national parks for their protection. Wildlife research, protection, conservation and management thinking in India, however, has continued to be limited to just these pockets. The reality clearly is far more graded and complex and this needs to be factored in.
Reports of human-leopard conflict, for instance, are regularly received from places as far apart as Gujarat, Himachal Pradesh, Uttarakhand and West Bengal. A significant percentage of of India’s wild elephant population too exists outside the protected area network and the same would apply in large or small measure for a number of such threatened species of flora and fauna.
There is clearly a need for a more comprehensive and wholistic perspective if conservation is to succeed. What the Akole situation is asking us to do is to urgently look outside and look at a much larger landscape.

Box 2
In their backyards

The leopard (see pic) was a female who was photographed when she came to the area to feed on a cow that was thrown by a farmer after it had died due to electrocution. This female had come with two of her cubs and a short while later, another younger female (also with two cubs) was photographed at the same spot.

Pic: Vidya Athreya

Both these females were then photographed a few days later by cameras at completely different locations, roughly four kms in opposite directions.
In another case, half an hour after a female leopard had been photographed by a camera trap, another picture was taken - this time of a woman who was headed in the same direction.
It is an excellent example of the close proximity of the leopards and humans here.
---
The other stories that are part of the series can be seen at
1) Man-Animal Row: Study holds vital clues
2) Akole's leopards have hardly jumped humans
3) How did the leopards get to Akole?
4) Conflict in Junnar is due to relocation
5) Understanding Akole's unusual phenomenon