Easily available prey draws leopards to urban habitats

Fairly regular spotting of leopards close to human habitation are not cases of animals straying into the cities.

The big cats come deliberately close to urban pockets to “reside”, because of easy availability of prey, suggests a new study. Tracking five radio-collared leopards for one year, researchers found these animals, even after being released in the jungle, quickly returned to the human proximity because of easy availability of their standard diet – stray dogs.

They moved at night, which timed perfectly with low human activity. They also spent more time closer to homes (less than 25 m in many locations but without any conflict with the humans) at night, than during the day.  “This gave them an access to people’s livestock, and yet kept them safe from people,” said lead author of the study, Vidhya Athreya, from the Wildlife Conservation Society, Bengaluru.

Five leopards (including three females) perceived as problem animals were captured from human-dominated areas in Maharashtra and Himachal Pradesh. None had a history of predatory attacks on humans. The animals were fitted with radio collars and set free. While two were moved to  the wild more than 50 km away, the remaining three were released near the site of their capture. The scientists monitored the animals’ activities for the next one year.

Immediately after release, the two translocated animals moved away 89 km in 37 days and 45 km in five months respectively from the release sites. Despite being released in forested patches, both translocated leopards moved through very human dominated landscapes in their post release wanderings, exposing the limitation of translocation as a strategy to minimse the impact of leopard-human conflict.