Fifty-eight percent of these victims were males and rest females. Questions were repeated several times if the respondents had problem in comprehending and a response was noted down only when there was no ambiguity. The predictive map highlights potential human-leopard conflict zones and helps formulate mitigation measures for these sites. Leopard attacks on humans in Nepal are attributed to be a combination of decline in wild prey, scarcity of water and lack of supervised livestock herding and guarding practices in villages [54]. Female leopard seals, the larger of the two sexes, can … A study conducted in 2016–2017 estimated dog density to be 0.8 per km2 (SE 0.4) in this North Bengal region [66]. Citation: Naha D, Sathyakumar S, Rawat GS (2018) Understanding drivers of human-leopard conflicts in the Indian Himalayan region: Spatio-temporal patterns of conflicts and perception of local communities towards conserving large carnivores. Consequently, they are cautious animals and, in any confrontational situation, are likely to back down. Almost immediately, the leopard attacked, ripping his right … The tea estate workers were mostly in scattered groups of 2–3 members during such incidents. The livestock density of this region is 58 per km2 (Livestock Census, 2012). A family was treated as the basic unit for the purpose of this study, with only one respondent from a family being interviewed. One of them could be the large-scale killing of leopard especially females between 1990–2005 [23] by forest officials and retaliatory killing by local communities. MAN-EATERS! nationalgeographic.com | 27d. These seems to be the primary social drivers of conflicts as has been documented with large felids worldwide [70,71]. In Pauri Garhwal majority of the respondents were middle aged (48 years SE 1.09) whereas for North Bengal they were slightly younger (38 years SE 1.08). We are grateful to the Ministry of Environment, Forest and Climate Change for the funding support through the National Mission of Himalayan studies. This analytical procedure can be adopted in other sites to identify potential human-carnivore conflict risk zones. The initial questions were related to simple demographic information to ease respondents into the interview session. Human killing is the decisive and most critical expression of human-leopard conflict and needs to be addressed sensitively to maintain local support for leopard conservation in India. The present study explores the nature of human-leopard conflicts and perception of local communities across the western and eastern Indian Himalayan region. Leopard seals are known to attack the black pontoons of … It is a matter of scientific curiosity as to why conflicts suddenly reduced in Pauri Garhwal but there could be several reasons contributing to this significant decline. North Bengal region being situated at the foothills of the bio-diversified Eastern Himalaya comprises of tall grasslands and sal dominated forest areas, thus ideally supporting more abundant and diverse wild prey compared to the rugged mountainous region of Pauri Garhwal. About 97% of the leopard attacks in North Bengal and 60% of the leopard attacks in Pauri resulted in human injuries. The big cat did not harm any cattle which is a very strange behaviour, ” wildlife warden for Nanded division Atindra Katti said. Night light data for the two sites were derived using 1000 m spatial resolution night-time visible lights data of India [41]. Seventy-eight percent of the victims were workers busy in spraying pesticides, plucking new flush of leaves or watering the plants in tea gardens. The big challenge in Sanjay Gandhi National Park is not only leopard attacks on the odd pig or cattle calf – leopards here sometimes kill people. In North Bengal, incidents of man-eating has been very rare and large scale game hunting of leopard was quite frequent till the 18th-19th century by British planters and the Cooch Behar royal family [51]. An equal proportion of people 41% were positive and negative towards leopard in Pauri Garhwal whereas in north Bengal a majority 75% of the respondents were positive towards leopard (S3 Fig). She is badly injured and being treated in Upington Mediclinic hospital, South Africa. Rapid deforestation and human-impacts on their habitats force these large carnivores to venture into unlikely landscapes outside protected areas for prey and cover, … Subsequently after Independence and creation of Bangladesh, Government of India settled large number of refugees within this region [33]. This can also be used for multiple categorical or continuous variables and thus following a logistic regression model by maximum likelihood we computed probability of conflict for any E = e and Z = z as follows: Compared to the 1990’s when there were only 121 leopard attacks in 4 years in North Bengal it has increased substantially to 805 in the last 13 years between 2004–2016. Studies conducted in Maharashtra have cited human intervention of capture and release of leopards to far-off sites disrupting their socio-biology as principal reason of increased attacks on people. For this reason, adult big cat encounters are rare at U.S. roadside zoos. Conflict information was collected on a presence/absence binary coding basis with a grid having a conflict incident recorded as ‘1’ and ‘0’ if absent. Due to the large-scale outmigration of people from the hills few men capable of livestock herding have been observed in the villages. Today—human-leopard conflicts are reported across India with major hotspots being Uttarakhand, West Bengal, Himachal Pradesh, Gujarat and Maharashtra [21]. Forty-eight percent of the people in North Bengal had no knowhow of the role of leopard, 24% stated that they helped maintain ecological balance whereas 17% believed their primary role was to destroy and subdue other animals. Pauri Garhwal is a district in Uttarakhand state and within close proximity to PAs such as Corbett and Rajaji Tiger Reserves. Based on our field surveys, 37% and 39% of leopard attacks were documented between 0900h to 1200h and 1200h to 1500h respectively (χ2 = 151.29, df = 7, p-value < 0.05). Funding: This study was funded by the Ministry of Environment, Forest and Climate Change, Government of India under the National Mission on Himalayan Studies NMHS/LG-2016/009/8510-2. The average annual income of agriculturalists was estimated to be INR 129,024, (= US $ 1886) whereas that of tea estate workers ranged between INR 36,000–48,000 (= US $526–700). Do Cheetahs Attack Humans? “There is no scenario in which entering a [space] with a big cat is going to be 100 percent safe, even if it’s been hand-raised,” she says, as the majority of big cats in roadside and backyard zoos around the country have been. Though remedial harvesting hypothesis suggests that removal of large cats at small scale from certain sites does not necessarily suppress their densities or reduce the population and other individuals occupy the vacant territories left by the residents [45] but in Pauri female leopards being removed in majority [23], the annual growth rate of the population might have been affected. Leopard killed in retaliation or shot dead by forest officials in North Bengal during this period was negligible and were thus not reported. But people buy into it, wanting to be close to these animal whisperers “like I want to be close to Jane Goodall,” Speiran says, noting that admiration for people who seem to share bonds with animals is probably a universal feeling for any animal lover. Thus present day Pauri Garhwal, is a matrix of agriculture lands, villages/towns, scrub/secondary forests and mature forests which is best suited for leopard [23]. The best model was selected based on the lowest AIC values Tables 2 and 3. S. Sathyakumar, But “animals are, in many ways, the last frontier of social justice.”. In addition to speed-breeding tigers so there are always cubs for tourists to cuddle, some fail to provide adequate food, enclosures, and veterinary care. Comparison of predictive models showing human-leopard conflict risk probability (North Bengal). A captive black leopard mauled a man who paid for the interaction in Broward County, according to a report by the Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission. “These are animals whose brains are literally designed to be ambush predators,” says Imogene Cancellare, a National Geographic Explorer and conservation biologist studying snow leopards. Since the “dawn of man”, even before you could call our ancestors “man”… the felines have hunted us, prowling our world. Adding to the confusion is the fact that many roadside zoo owners and breeders bill themselves as rescuers or advertise that their businesses help fund conservation. The incident took place at Kinhi village in the district’s Ashti taluka on Friday afternoon. Some of the other parameters recorded during the interviews are provided as pie charts (S2 Fig). Thus the fundamental challenge to conserve leopards in the human-dominated Himalayan region will be developing resilience and tolerance of local communities through outreach programs, trust building measures ultimately reducing the need for retaliatory predator control measures. Fifty seven percent of the attacks on humans in Pauri Garhwal occurred within an altitudinal range of 1000–1500 m whereas in North Bengal all attacks were recorded between 100–500 m (S1 Fig). In North Bengal due to accidental nature of attacks, early warning mechanism such as setting up of motion-enabled sensors with sirens/alarms in tea gardens can be initiated by forest department and the local administration. Using this probability values conflict risk maps were prepared in Arc GIS 10.2. He is licensed by the U.S. Department of Agriculture as an animal dealer, and he owns the leopard legally. These frequent visitations near human settlements could also have triggered attacks on humans especially children. This is largely due to the strong foundation of Joint Forest Management (JFM) activities [69] that have long been practiced in North Bengal leading to better awareness and participation of local communities in conservation and management of biodiversity. The number of injuries to leopard attacks were much higher in North Bengal compared to Pauri Garhwal, whereas deaths to such attacks were higher in Pauri. The Big Cats! The tourist was inside her tent when the attack occurred. This man isn’t a lion whisperer—it’s completely unnatural.”. Kody Antle’s family runs a charity that purports to raise money for wild tiger conservation; Poggi describes his business as an animal sanctuary (legitimate sanctuaries typically do not allow public contact with wild animals, according to the Global Federation for Animal Sanctuaries). This is not the first such attack to be reported from the state, where human-leopard conflict has been increasing. Forty-one percent of respondents in Pauri and 75% in North Bengal were positive towards presence and conservation of leopard. G. S. Rawat, Affiliation: The mean number of humans killed by leopard per year in Pauri Garhwal during this period was estimated to be 3.5 (SE 0.91). This district falls within Biogeographic Zone 2 (Himalaya) and Biotic Province 2B (Western Himalaya) as per the Biogeographic Classification of India [30]. It will be interesting to investigate population dynamics and litter size of the leopard population in Pauri Garhwal. We also noted other details such as age and occupation of victim, time and month of attack, activity during attack, vegetation type and altitude of conflict site as well as whether the attack resulted in death or injury. This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited. A total of 14 predictor variables (independent variables) were selected based on their ecological importance Table 1. As depicted by the probability risk map, certain sites near the northeastern and central part of Pauri district and central, south western part of North Bengal region showed increased chances of leopard predation risk on humans. For the first time ever, a troop of wild chimpanzees were caught warding off a leopard and eating its freshly killed prey, lending more insight into how humans … Human-leopard conflict predictive risk map, Pauri Garhwal. This research was undertaken to investigate the ecological aspects of human killing and injury, spatial characteristic and pattern of such sites, temporal and seasonal trends of attacks and perception of local communities towards leopard in the Indian Himalayan region (IHR). Knowledge gained through such studies in human-dominated landscapes help solve complex conservation problems such as human-wildlife conflicts [6–12], where apart from the dynamics of such events, a thorough understanding of the social aspects of conflicts are essential for implementing further mitigation measures [13–19]. Florida leopard attack put humans—and big cats—in a terrible situation Online videos from roadside zoo owners create the false impression that it’s safe to play-fight with adult big cats. Twenty-three percent of the leopard attack victims (both injury and deaths) in Pauri Garhwal were between 11–20 years in age followed by 21% between 1–10 years and 18% in the middle age group of 31–40 years. © 1996-2015 National Geographic Society, © 2015- But Florida law prohibits letting a visitor have full contact with a big cat larger than 25 pounds. The two study sites are spread across the western and eastern IHR Figs 1 & 2. To reduce livestock depredation respondents opined to use predator proof enclosures and lights around households in Pauri whereas in North Bengal people vouched for relocating problem animals, introducing native wild prey in forests and installing predator proof enclosures. Comparison of socio-economic condition of respondents across the two study sites. We analyzed the conflict data using rare events model in a binary logistic regression framework to understand spatial patterns of such incidents for Pauri Garhwal and North Bengal. Snow leopards have simply never been known to attack people. Approximately 58% percent of respondents were agriculturalists in Pauri whereas in North Bengal they were 46% tea estate workers by profession (S3 Fig). Animal breeder Michael Poggi keeps his black leopard in this cage in the backyard of his Florida home. This was similar to findings of previous studies by [22,23] in Pauri and [52] in Maharashtra. Turner intends to file a lawsuit against Poggi, the owner of the leopard, his lawyer told Local 10 News. Chaos erupted in west-central India when a leopard entered a Palher Nagar compound and attacked some residents. broad scope, and wide readership – a perfect fit for your research every time. These are common marketing tactics used in the private zoo industry so customers feel like the money they’re paying to interact with wild animals is helping them. Gazetteers and hunting records maintained by the British officers in colonial times confirm visitation by leopard frequently near human settlements to predate on livestock and domestic animals in spite of vast wilderness areas with abundant wild prey.