In conversation with Dr. Vidya Athreya of the Wildlife Conservation Society – India
August 1 is the day of the Sri Lankan leopard – the unique subspecies of leopard, Panthera pardus kotiya, that roams practically all parts of our little island.
Sri Lanka Leopard Day was instituted in 2021 as part of an initiative led by the Wildlife and Nature Protection Society (WNPS), together with the Department of Wildlife Conservation (DWC) and the Government of Sri Lanka. The prime motivation for Sri Lanka Leopard Day, as its name suggests, was to draw the public’s attention to this iconic species and the pressures that it now faces for its very existence, both in and outside of protected areas.
Ecologically, our leopards play a vital role as an umbrella species, meaning that the land under their use harbours many more species, from prey to other mammalian wildlife, and conservation efforts targeted at protecting the leopard can be used to protect not just the leopard but the other less famous biodiversity in its habitats. The absence of the leopard will also have a knock-on effect on the ecosystems of which it is a part. This is why it is doubly essential to conserve the leopard properly.
Lankans and leopards
The Lankan relationship with leopards is at once fascinating and troubling. Habitat loss, and importantly, fragmentation (leopards are wide-ranging creatures) pose a significant threat to the future of the leopard. Rapid deforestation, expanding agriculture, and urbanisation have encroached upon the leopards’ natural habitats, leaving them with fewer places to roam freely and find prey. As their homes diminish, not only do their numbers dwindle, but their interactions with humans increase, building more room for human-wildlife conflict.
As human populations grow, so does the competition for resources. Leopards, in search of food, sometimes prey on livestock (and pets), sparking retaliation from farmers trying to safeguard their livelihoods. These conflicts have escalated, leading to fatal consequences for the leopards and deepening negative perceptions of them among local communities. Many leopards each year are killed by humans through snares and through inhumane trapping or deterrent methods like jaw bombs.
Poaching and illegal wildlife trade also pose a significant threat to the leopard. Leopard skin, bones, and other body parts are coveted on the black market, leading to the hunting of leopards. Additionally, the exotic pet trade poses further dangers to the leopard, disrupting their populations and diminishing their chances of survival.
In early 2022, LOLC Holdings PLC and the WNPS collaborated to set up the Multi-Regional Monitoring System for the Sri Lankan Leopard Project. This five-year project built upon three primary pillars: ecological research, raising awareness, implementing conservation projects with the goal of gathering information on leopard distribution outside of protected areas, understanding the nature of human-leopard interactions, and identifying areas with human-leopard conflict. The project recorded 14 human-induced leopard deaths in 2022, with many more likely unrecorded.
The project’s immediate response to its findings over the past year is to double down on awareness and educate communities about the unintended consequences of using snares and the danger they pose to leopards and other wildlife.
Learning from the world around us
Leopards, like Sri Lanka’s other remarkably charismatic wildlife species, the elephant, are not unique to Sri Lanka, and so, there are often lessons to be learned by looking at how those around us deal with these fascinating animals.
In honour of Sri Lanka Leopard Day, The Sunday Morning Brunch sat down with Wildlife Conservation Society – India Director Dr. Vidya Athreya, an ecologist by training who has always been fascinated by interactions between different groups of species/organisms. Dr. Athreya is a member of the IUCN Cat Specialist Group; she has assisted in formulating state and national level policy guidelines on managing human-leopard conflict. Her research has led to an increased awareness of large carnivores outside protected areas.
Much of her work deals with big cats in India and how they interact with people and this is part of what Brunch discussed with her – what lessons we can learn from India when it comes to managing leopards and what part culture plays in conservation.
Dr. Athreya shared that she had had a lifelong interest in big cats, though studying leopards to the point that she had had been rather serendipitous and driven by a period of particularly bad human-leopard conflict, where more than 50 people were attacked over a two-year period in a cropland landscape.
“It got me really interested in what these cats are doing in human areas,” Dr. Athreya said, adding that in her years studying leopards, she had come to understand that the term ‘human-leopard conflict’ was something we collectively needed to move away from for meaningful conservation of leopards to take place. “We must move away from conflict as a baseline. The IUCN Human-Wildlife Conflict and Coexistence Specialist Group (HWCCSG) has also deliberated on this and it is evident that it is not conflict, but damage. Conflict is a much more serious issue, but looking at it as damage caused by wild animals changes how you view it too.”
Dr. Athreya also said that there would always be some element of damage to human property and assets because of how adaptable leopards were. They can survive in almost any landscape, from arid to semi-arid to cropland to peri-urban areas.
She also noted that despite there being several peri-urban leopard populations in India (Mumbai for example, borders a national park and leopards do frequently venture into adjacent urban areas because of this), there have been very few attacks on people. “Humans are not their prey,” Dr. Athreya stressed. “Conflict isn’t increasing. Livestock attacks will happen, but that is a separate issue.”
Some strategies that India uses to minimise the impact of damage caused by leopards is the Indian Government making ex gratia payments to those who lose livestock, which does a lot to reduce anti-leopard sentiments from those who frequently deal with the damage these animals cause.
The other chief strategy Dr. Athreya shared with Brunch was that of changing mindsets, with researchers, media, and citizens working together to educate people on leopards and how they behave in order to avoid panic and promote coexisting with leopards in their home habitats. “Otherwise, people panic and remove the animal,” Dr Athreya explained. “Many studies have shown that when you remove these animals and release them somewhere else, it creates greater conflict at the site of release and the chances of attacks on humans near these release sites increase.”
Changing mindsets in Sri Lanka
One of the things Dr. Athreya finds most inspiring about the Lankan attitude to leopards is its existing status as a wildlife emblem.
“Sri Lanka loves its leopards; they’re a wildlife emblem and there is a lot of pride surrounding them, which is really nice,” she said, noting that this attitude of appreciation for the leopard did mean that there were attempts for people and leopards to live together harmoniously. However, she did observe that the Sri Lankan context had more snaring than the Indian context.
“India is a huge country and some places handle it better and some don’t,” Dr. Athreya said of the Indian human-leopard management landscape, but part of what makes handling human-leopard interactions easier is detailed and proactive guidelines issued by the relevant ministries centrally.
“Sri Lanka could really benefit from something similar at both the national level and the field level,” Dr. Athreya said of how Indian conservation strategies could inform local ones. “Snaring seems to be a problem [in Sri Lanka] and if that can be reduced through cooperation and oversight, that would be excellent because an injured leopard is definitely not a good animal to have around.”
Part of what drew Dr. Athreya to studying big cats is how fascinating they are. “A cat is a cat. They come in different sizes and coats, but they’re all essentially the same. The way they function is fascinating. Only after I started working on leopards did I realise how amazingly adaptable they are and how little we actually understand. I actually call them ghosts of the night because of how close they are to human presence without being seen.”
Lankan leopards, to Dr. Athreya, are not too different from their Indian counterparts, largely due to the behaviour of leopards being so diverse because of how adaptable they are. For example, some populations are nocturnal because that is what suits their habitats best. This adaptability of leopards too needs to be communicated to communities to change their viewpoints when it comes to these animals, in order to identify the patterns of the leopards around them and then work to coexist peacefully.
This is exactly why it is important to pay attention to both nature and culture. “Culture is a very powerful thing. It allows people to accept things or not accept things in a way that is less direct than a fleeting awareness session that says ‘Save the Leopard’. Culture is what you grow up with and is also something you can influence in people.
“Interestingly, in Bombay, you have the warli community who have always revered leopards passing by and have rituals around the animals. They live in houses made of sticks and are not at all bothered by the leopards because they are culturally sensitive to them. However, people who do not have this cultural sensitivity, such as people living in large buildings who see leopards from seven or eight floors up, get scared and panic,” Dr. Athreya said, and this is where culture can come in to decrease the sense of fear that surrounds leopards and to increase understanding.
Sharing the knowledge
Dr. Athreya’s fascination with leopards has led her to studying them professionally over the course of her career and she is very excited to be able to share her fascination with leopards with a Sri Lankan audience as the speaker for this month’s WNPS Public Lecture Series.
The Public Lecture Series is an acclaimed series of monthly talks with wildlife and conservation professionals that looks to inform the public on different flora and fauna and what we can do to conserve them. In light of Sri Lanka Leopard Day, Dr. Athreya will be delivering the August Public Lecture.
“The lecture will be me sharing my experiences of learning about leopards. It’s all very new to me. Not even I believed that leopards visited croplands. I hope to discuss leopards themselves and also how we have tried to resolve conflict in places like Mumbai. The talk is mainly going to be my journey of realising that with conservation, you start with an animal, but realise that the solutions lie among people.”
The August Nations Trust WNPS Monthly Lecture by Dr. Vidya Athreya – ‘Leopards: Our adaptable neighbours’ – takes place at 6 p.m. on 10 August at the Jasmine Hall, BMICH. It is open to both members and non-members and entrance is free
