Roads emerging critical threats to leopards in Madhya Pradesh

BHOPAL: An adult leopard was run over by a vehicle at Raisen district in Madhya Pradesh (MP) on Wednesday night.
The big cat, fifth to have been killed in vehicular collision in last six months, was hit while it was dragging its kill, a half-eaten cow, off the Bhopal-Silwani road, around 80 km from the district headquarters.

Forest officials said its carcass and kill were found on Jamuniya Ghati area. Leopard had a fatal head injury resulting its death on the spot.

MP has lost more than 60 leopards to poaching, retaliatory killing and road accidents in the last three years, including six that were trapped, axed and electrocuted to death for hides and nails.

In other cases, leopards were poached using crude bombs and deadly clutch wire traps, at Chhatarpur and Sagar districts. Poachers had chopped off the claws for their nails in two different cases reported from Alirajpur and Dhar. A hide was seized from south Balaghat area on February 13.

The frequent deaths have prompted wildlife activists to call for conservation programs for leopards in line with those conducted for tigers.

Wildlife activist Ajay Dubey has written a letter to the Union minister for forest and environment (Moef), to constitute a special cell or wing at national level for their protection. An RTI filed by him has revealed that 138 leopards have died in MP since 2008.

Maximum casualties were reported in 2011 (43) of which 17 were killed by poachers in Seoni, Balaghat, Burhanpur, Barwani, Mandla, Sehore, Panna, Hoshangabad and Badwah forest areas.

Poor investigations by inexperienced and un-resourceful rangers has led to submission of week charge-sheets in most of the cases, said wildlife experts adding that the conviction level in poaching cases in MP is below 5%. The poaching figures could have been much more if all cases of leopard deaths are investigated properly. Allegedly, in most of the cases, officers shy away from registering a poaching case. "Instead, a common reason is put forth- "killed in territorial war" to avert action from their higher-ups," said Dubey.