Hail to the leopard, spirit of the forest

In the presence of two regal cats we watched mesmerised and awestruck. Some of that aura rubbed off on us


I have wandered only a handful of forests. Most wildlife enthusiasts might have traveled more in one year than I have over the last five. So I never complain about not having seen most of our mammals including the nation's heartthrob, the tiger.


But I have always worried about not having met His Highness the Leopard. The jungles I have roamed have plenty of leopards and I have come across ample evidence that pointed towards their activity. In some cases I have missed the beast by a hair's breadth: scores of pug marks, plenty of scat, but no leopard.


While I think of the tiger as a samurai -- bold, always in the limelight and powerful -- I equate the leopard to a ninja -- silent, cunning, unseen and deadly. Maybe I'm getting carried away here so let me cut to the chase and tell you about my first leopard! It's kinda obvious by now that I finally did see one, right?


A few weeks ago I was on safari in Mudumalai (it was in fact the first safari of the trip) along with some like-minded friends. Around 4:45 in the evening we were inside the tourist zone of the park looking at chital and gaur. We were talking in hushed whispers when, suddenly, the watcher who accompanied us called our attention to the other side of the vehicle exclaiming softly, "Leopard, leopard!" 


At the sound of the word the adrenalin rush I felt must have clocked 240 kph. I frantically scanned the area to which he pointed. I was afraid that the cat would slink away into the undergrowth.


Then, through the dense clump of bushes I spied rosettes. The driver inched the vehicle forward. And there it was -- a magnificent leopard bathing in the evening sun!

Half asleep and sunbathing

The scene was magical. The yellowish leopard dozing in orange sun-glow just a few yards away. Unbelievable. Unexpected. Lazing nonchalantly, it lifted its head and aimed a penetrating stare straight at us, or should I say through us!

In the leopard's piercing gaze

With the vehicle now silent, we sat watching and photographing the leopard for more than ten minutes. It regarded us as if to say, "I know you are ogling but I don't care" and continued basking. The cat was relaxed and seemed least bothered by our presence. We were relaxed because the leopard was.


While we gazed mesmerized, we were shaken back to reality by a sound from the other side. The distant roar of a tiger. The leopard looked in the direction of the sound. We took in the magical suspense of the moment: A leopard on one side and a tiger calling from the other. After a few minutes, before we realized it, the leopard melted into the undergrowth.


We moved on and completed the safari. We did not see the tiger that roared. And whatever we saw after the leopard hardly registered any impact. My thoughts had fastened to the glowing rosetted coat I had gazed upon for ten minutes, and its owner. I remembered the words of the veteran wildlife photographer TNA Perumal: "The leopard is like the spirit of the forest." And I had been blessed by it.

The spirit in all its glory

Text and photos: Arun

The next time you see a leopard in your town...

If you took the city of Tokyo and turned it upside down and shook it you would be amazed at the animals that fall out: badgers, wolves, boa constrictors, crocodiles, ostriches, baboons, capybaras, wild boars, leopards, manatees, ruminants, in untold numbers. There is no doubt in my mind that feral giraffes and feral hippos have been living in Tokyo for generations without seeing a soul." 
- Yann Martel, Life of Pi 

As the horrendous impact of the earthquake that hit Japan last month has shown, "shaking" a city is none too far-fetched an image. But when Martel wrote these lines, his metaphor was perhaps figurative. Either way, there are incidents time and again where you run into leopards, jackals and foxes in open yards, farmhouses and city outskirts. And this troubling reality is reinforced further by the leopard that ventured into the Mysore campus of Infosys in February. 


We are slowly being enlightened to the reality that the description of wild animal doesn't necessarily suit animals that are confined to forests. Leopards can survive in suburbs and cities by hiding in abandoned buildings and preying on stray dogs. This January, fellow-Ogre Bijoy and friend Rohit saw a leopard that had been run over by a speeding vehicle at dawn on the NICE road on the outskirts of Bangalore city. While the leopards of Mumbai have made headlines repeatedly, Mysore has seen several leopard-man conflicts in recent years. The worst was perhaps in 2008 when, in the presence of police and forest officials, an assembled mob surrounded a leopard that had strayed into the city and beat it to death. Media spread rumours that it was a man-eater, as it had desperately lunged at some of its tormentors with the fury typical of a cornered wild animal. 


The morning of March 8 saw forest officials, police and CISF at the Infosys campus in Mysore after a leopard had been spotted at night in one of the buildings under construction. This time the leopard was tranquilized and subsequently released 90 km away in Nagarahole National Park. Some amateur photographers got too close to the cornered leopard, completely disregarding security warnings. As these heroes attempted to photograph the leopard from close quarters, the cat charged them. On the basis of this incident, media reports announced shriekingly that the leopard had "mauled" the photographer. Mercifully, being amid a more "aware" group of humans, the leopard was not immediately branded a man-eater and bludgeoned to death. 


Leopards are all around, especially in a city like Mysore. Chamundi Hills, a well-known leopard habitat, is being encroached by the city from all directions. Naturally, running short of food, opportunistic leopards will take to the suburbs for easy pickings in stray dogs and livestock. Rarely do we get instances where they attack humans, and when they do, it is either when they are cornered or trying to protect their young. 


The Ministry of Environment and Forests has come up with very elaborate guidelines on how to deal with human-leopard conflict. When there has been no deliberate attack, and no straying into thickly populated area, the manual says it is best to leave the leopard alone, the reason being that the animals may make every effort to keep away from people. But if the leopard ends up in a populated area, there is a chance that human presence can agitate them into acts of desperation. In the rare event of it being a child-lifter or in case of deliberate attacks on humans, the officials are permitted to euthanise the animal in a humane way. 


Apart from this, several steps may be taken to minimize public fury due to such conflicts. The manual provides guidance to build leopard-proof cattle sheds, educate villagers who are compensated for any livestock taken by the animals, and to leave the livestock kill alone to prevent further attacks. Also, providing proper sanitation and waste disposal in villages near forests is important to check pig and stray dog activity as these animals attract leopards. In some villages in the Himalayas, we have noticed dogs with spiked metal collars to deter leopards (the cats are known to kill their prey with a fatal bite to the throat, severing the jugular vein).

A Bhotia dog in Chopta, Uttarakhand is fitted with a spiked metal collar to deter predation by leopards

Man-animal conflicts are a reality we have to live with given the increasing rate of habitat fragmentation. Sighting a leopard near human habitation does not warrant pressing the panic button -- it might be a passerby on the lookout for stray dogs. Alert the local wildlife warden rather than raise a public alarm. 


Download this informative manual [PDF/ ZIP] on human-leopard conflicts. You never know when you may need it.

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Text by Sandeep Somasekharan with additional inputs from Bijoy Venugopal
Photographs: Leopard image by Philip MacKenzie/ Stock.xchng; Other images by Bijoy Venugopal


Thanks to Kalyan Varma for the conversations that inspired this post and to Vidya Athreya whom we have never met but whose important work at Project Waghoba we have followed from a distance. The Green Ogre had earlier written about Kalyan's stirring photo-essay on the capture of a leopard in Valparai. 


Also read Arun Menon's account of a suspected leopard presence in Bilikal Rangaswamy Betta.

At Bilikal Rangaswamy Betta, was the leopard watching us?

Off we went, my namesake Arun and I, early Saturday morning on the Diwali weekend. Our destination - Bilikal Rangaswamy Betta, a hill in Kanakapura taluk of Bangalore Rural district. At the top of the hill is a temple but, of course, our visit was a pilgrimage of a different kind. We were there for birding and to salvage some peace and quiet, which is impossible in the city during Diwali. 


Due to several unfortunate reasons we reached the foothills quite late. I tried to take the bike on the jeep track but soon gave up as I didn't want it to end up in a garage the next day. Parking it beside the track we continued on foot. The first thing that greeted us was not something from the sky, but from the earth.


Fungi -- pale, thin, strand-like filaments shooting up from the ground.

Curious fungi

Birding soon proved a disappointment that day. We didn't see much except for a couple of unidentified raptors, bulbuls and some macaques on a rock next to some plantations at the top.

A leopard, a village and a photographer's conscience

From a respectful distance, I have always admired Kalyan Varma for his gift - the talent to tell stories and unravel mysteries through his wildlife photographs. But his coverage, in March this year, of a leopard trapped in the village of Valparai is sheer testament to the fact that this young man is no mere shutterbug collecting photographic souvenirs in our forests and trading them for awards. He is what wildlife conservation needs with utmost urgency -- a wildlife photojournalist with a conscience. 


Not many people I know want to run into a leopard in the wild. So when one comes visiting a village, it is far from welcome. The leopard in this story was not above blame - it was responsible for the death of a young girl. It doesn't take much to anger a village and this killing provided ample tinder to fan a blazing hatred for the cat. A trap was set and the leopard was caught. The dramatis personae - villagers, forest officers, policemen and local press photographers - all played their part. The fallen hero, of course, was the leopard. What struck me about Kalyan's account was the irony of the 'shoot'. A veterinarian tries - first in vain - to bring the cat down, while all the while Kalyan clicks away feverishly, capturing through his trained eye the predicament of a wild animal that is down, but far from out.


In his journal, Kalyan writes: 'A tear rolled down its eye and the leopard slowly went down. I cocooned myself from the whole crowd as the cops were taking care of them and I could not see anything but the face of the leopard through the camera. I just broke down at this point and walked away.' 


Read all about it here 


Salut, Kalyan Varma. For boldly doing what no wildlife photographer has dared do before - for bringing out in detail the inexorable sadness of human-animal conflict.