Leopard attacks on humans, livestock not common, says new study

A new study has found that leopard attacks on humans were not common and livestock losses were much less than one would expect, especially considering the complete dependency of leopards on domestic animals as prey.

The study looked into the losses that leopards cause to human life and property in Akole tehsil of Ahmednagar district western Maharashtra.

At the time of the study, Akole town had a human population of about 20,000, while the average population density was 266 people per sq km, and average livestock density of Ahmednagar was 162 per sq km.

The researchers included Dr Vidya Athreya (Wildlife Conservation Society – India), Dr Kavita Isvaran (Centre for Ecological Sciences), Morten Odden (Inland Norway University of Applied Sciences), Dr John DC Linnell (Norwegian Institute for Nature Research), Aritra Kshettry (Wildlife Conservation Society – India), Dr Jagdish Krishnaswamy (Ashoka Trust for Research in Ecology & the Environment), and Ullas K Karanth (Centre for Wildlife Studies).

It is the final of a series of papers that emerged from this study site where a combination of methods including interviews, camera trapping and GPS-collaring were used to transform the way we understand leopard ecology in human dominated landscapes.

Diseases and natural causes contributed more to livestock mortality than predation by leopards.

The impact of predators was, thus, unexpectedly low considering the density of humans, their livestock and leopards in the region. It was also found that ineffective night-time livestock protection and the presence of domestic dogs increased the probability of leopard predation on livestock.

Given that protection of livestock by humans is very important in reducing losses, proactive measures such as effective livestock sheds would be more effective than reactive measures such as translocation of leopards.

The authors finally discussed the usage of the word ‘conflict’ and argue that the word be used with a lot of care as it blames the species involved when in reality, livestock losses could occur because humans are not focussing on keeping the livestock secure and away from the reach of the predators that share space with humans.