Leopard in the City

I had been meaning to write on ‘Urban Wildlife’ for some time now; an urge driven mostly by my experiences in our national capital, Delhi. It was in 2000 that I remember being astounded by the sheer number of squirrels traipsing on trees, buildings and on the pavements in delhi. I was staying near Connaught Palace at that time, and squirrels were omnipresent; with their cute brown fur, their tiny forelimbs clutching at food. Years later when I was staying in South Delhi, we had a tract of protected forest right behind our college – an extrusion of the Delhi ridge. Peacocks, foxes, Nilgai (blue bulls, a type of antelope) and squirrels of course, were to be found in plenty in the forest, which is open to public. We used to roam in the forest sometimes, looking out for peacocks with their majestic plumage all fanned out and collecting their pretty feathers from the ground. Once when I was climbing down a small ridge in the forest, I must have startled a family of nilgais for they burst out from behind a thick green wall of foliage, and galloped right down below me, not more than 10 feet away. Congested Mumbai too, has its share of wildlife and a large protected forest in Sanjay Gandhi National Park, home to an astounding range of flora and fauna.

Guwahati located along the southern bank of the Brahmaputra, is bounded by hills on the other sides. The expanding city corridors and the main city itself now form the largest metropolitan area in north-eastern India. For a city that has 11 forest reserves, including 2 wildlife sanctuaries in its vicinity, Guwahati may very well boast of the highest concentration of wildlife.  Guwahati and Greater Guwahati are home to several rare mammals like the elephant, tiger, leopard, primates etc. With shrinking living spaces and a tentatively-shared habitat it is common for these animals to stray into the city sometimes.

The latest such incident occurred this January 7^th, when a male leopard strayed into the city, mauling and injuring 4 people before it was tranquilised by Forest personnel and whisked away for rehabilitation. What happened that day is a stark reminder of the sad drama that gets invariably played out in man-animal confrontations. The animal cowed and unsure of a city environment, wants to pass through and finding his escape difficult, attacks the first thing he sees, in this case, humans. People on the other hand, being informed of such an animal in their vicinity, congregate and surge towards the spot where the animal was seen. The unsure animal now further cornered and feeling threatened by human sounds and sights, becomes more aggressive and goes into a frenzy. In this case, the unruly crowd that had assembled to see the cornered animal, made the task of tranquilising the leopard all the more difficult. A procedure that should have clinically taken 5 minutes took 45.

Some days back, a tiger was killed by police bullets outside Kaziranga. The tiger has strayed out of the park and was resting in a bamboo grove by the highway when it was spotted. Predictably a crowd gathered at the spot and a media photographer trying to get a good picture of the tiger, got in the way of the animal trying to escape. The tiger finding its way blocked lunged at the photographer, and the armed police beside felled the animal like a mad dog. A wildlife personnel said, “Point a camera at a tiger or a leopard and it thinks it is being attacked. After that it will lunge at you. That is cat behavior.” It is pertinent to note that where Nature has given the leopard claws and teeth, it has given us humans, the brain and the demeanour to think and act sensibly. The leopard stays true to its nature but do we?