More leopards sighted, fear stalks Sohna village

GURUGRAM: Residents of Mandawar in Sohna, a village of 1,300 people in the Aravalis where a leopard was thrashed to death on November 24, have reported three more big cat sightings since. Villagers are afraid to even venture out of their homes.
“We had taken our goats to graze near the temple on Friday when a leopard came down from the hill and attacked a goat,” said Jahul, adding there were 10 others present when the leopard took away the goat.
Even though they first tried to scare away the big cat, they had to run for their safety when they saw the leopard was not flustered and continued to approach the goat, Jahul said. Sarpanch Dhan Singh claimed villagers spotted leopards near their village at least thrice in the last week. “On one occasion, it was a leopard with two cubs,” Singh said.
Mandawar is on the fringes of a forest area and villagers believe leopards are straying into the village in search of food and water, which is why sightings have become more frequent. “We have informed authorities about the sightings,” said Singh, adding if no action is taken to check movement of leopards in the village, it would lead to increased man-animal conflict.
“Constructing water holes inside the forest area to ensure round-the-year availability of water may help in checking movement of leopards towards human habitats,” said Singh. He also urged the government to fence forest areas close to human habitation. “We’re going to submit a memorandum to the district administration on Monday to make arrangements for villagers’ safety,” he said.
Forest department officials said they were closely monitoring the situation and field staff had been alerted. “Unavailability of sufficient field staff and resources is a hurdle towards monitoring such a vast area. But the department is making all efforts to prevent any untoward incident,” said a senior forest official.
The department, he added, had prepared a proposal to conduct a detailed study of leopard movement and its habitat in the Aravalis, in order to prepare a comprehensive conservation and protection management plan for wildlife in the region, thereby minimising man-animal conflict. For this, the department, with the help of Wildlife Institute of India (WII), is to planning to tag leopards with GPS-enabled radio collars and install more camera traps in various parts of the Aravalis to understand the nature of big cat movement in the ranges.