Leopard has killed another small child in Budgam and left with no option the establishment has issued a shoot-at-sight order for the big cat. This is not the first such instance and if our knowledge of the leopard hunts is anything to go by then this certainly would not be the last. Leopards are territorial carnivores and consider a right to kill any herbivore animal within a particular geography.
The trouble is that the expanding population of humans is forcing people to move towards villages and forests. The case of that girl child killed by a leopard in Ompora Budgam a few years is a case in point. The colony is built in an area on the fringes of the Damodar highland area. The area is filled with shrubby ravines, a perfect camouflage for leopards. There are some three hundred homes in that colony, each house living in constant threat of leopards.
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Even before the Ompora high ground colony attack, an NGO activist had suggested after cross-verifying lots of eyewitness accounts that a leap of leopards may have made Damodar Karewas their home. The activist had begun a laughing stock and the wildlife department did not take him seriously.
The result of this negligence of an honest analysis is there for all to see. In a village called Guthsuthoo, they say leopard sightings are as frequent as jackal sightings. A few villagers even claim to have seen these leopards eating offal littered by chicken sellers and mutton sellers.
This is a dangerous situation. A slight change in the eating behavior of leopards can wreak havoc with the food chain.
We can only pray that the relevant department finds this leopard soon and kills it as it has become a man water. But the larger question remains – how long have the 20000-odd souls living in the vicinity of Damodar Karewas to live in constant fear of leopards attacking their children? This is a question that the establishment needs to answer and needs to answer on an urgent basis.
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