NEW DELHI, Dec 24 - India has recorded 60 per cent increase in leopard population, while Assam has recorded a population of 47 and the Northeast has an estimated 141 leopards. Union Environment, Forest and Climate Change Minister Prakash Javadekar earlier this week released the Status of Leopard in India 2018 Report. �Happy to announce that India now has 12,852 leopards. More than 60 per cent increase in population has been recorded over the previous estimate which was conducted in 2014,� he said.
A total of 5,240 adult individual leopards were photo-captured. The overall leopard population in the tiger range landscape of India was estimated at 12,852. Out of a total 10,602 surveyed grids in India, leopard presence was recorded for 3,475 grids, the report said. The leopard population estimates in the forest areas of tiger states, 2018, include Arunachal Pradesh (Pakke) 11, and Assam (Manas and Nameri) 47. Together, the leopard population in the NE hills and the Brahmaputra flood plains is 141.
The report said that leopards are distributed widely in the NE landscape from the high altitude of eastern Himalayas to the forests adjacent to tea gardens in the flood plains. But, due to sampling inadequacy, the leopard population was estimated only from the camera-trapped sites of the northern West Bengal, Manas and Nameri tiger reserves of Assam and the southern valley of Pakke Tiger Reserve in Arunachal.
A few photographs were obtained from Kaziranga and Namdapha tiger reserves, but due to low detection and low sample size, the population was not estimated from these tiger reserves. Poaching, human-wildlife conflict and continuous land use change associated with agriculture, tea gardens, and linear infrastructure are major threats to leopard populations in this region.
Leopards are a widely distributed species, and, in comparison to other large carnivores, they have been able to survive better in an increasingly human-dominated landscape, largely due to its adaptable behaviour. Leopards serve as the apex predators in most of the forested landscapes in India, beyond the realm of tiger and lion.
While leopards have been persecuted historically, we find them evoking a negative response in large parts of country due to negative interactions with humans all the more today. Despite their widespread distribution, leopard habitats are being increasingly fragmented, and such small fragmented areas with low wild prey densities cannot harbour a sizable population of leopards. This has resulted in leopards venturing out into human-dominated landscapes, leading conflicts, the report said.
Intense conflicts are mostly reported from the hills of Shivalik-Terai landscape and parts of central India. Central India harbours the largest population of leopards in its fragmented forest patches. While genetic and population data suggest that leopard populations are continuous, there is an increasing need for corridor connectivity and improvement of habitat to reduce the chances of conflicts, it said.
With leopards venturing out into human habitations more often, developmental projects need appropriate mitigation measures and greener technology to sustain not only leopards, but also other carnivores and biodiversity in general. With the government�s efforts towards increasing protection, along with a range of measures to improve habitat conditions (like village relocation), tiger and leopards have shown remarkable recovery.
�We are at that juncture where socio-economic development and conservation are at a critical point. It is now important, more than ever, to incorporate and implement a model of adaptive management of protected areas, which are still in poor condition...,� the report said.