Ranchi: Five people have been killed by leopards in Jharkhand in just 25 days, creating an atmosphere of perpetual fear and panic in the Palamu Tiger Reserve area and the Garhwa district.
People in the area's roughly 150 communities avoid venturing outside after dark for fear of being attacked by the big cat.
As a direct result of the panic, there has been a significant drop in the number of students attending schools. Due to increased safety concerns, the farmers now always have to go out of their way to find a partner to work with them in the fields.
The Forest Department says that only one leopard that eats people is responsible for the deaths, but the villagers think that there are more.
Because leopards typically avoid attacking humans, this phenomenon has been viewed with great concern by wildlife scientists.
This only happens when it is hard for the big cats to find food and stay alive.
Officer Shashi Kumar of the Garhwa Southern Forest Division has reported that there is just one leopard in the area that has been entering human settlements and attacking humans.
An effort to tranquillize and catch the huge cat, he said, was already underway.
The locations where the animal has been spotted are currently being patrolled by Nawab Shafat Ali Khan, a wildlife specialist and shooter from Hyderabad, his son Haider Ali Khan, and Sampath, a shooter from Telangana.
If all other attempts to capture the leopard fail, they stated it will have to be shot.
A total of 50–60 cameras have been set up to keep an eye on its movements. 50–60 forest workers are working on this as a team.
Four cages have been set up in places where the leopard is likely to move. Some areas have also been set up with traps, although these have not proven successful.
Shafat Ali said that his team saw the leopard around 8 p.m. on January 6 near Barwa village in the Ramkanda block of the Garhwa district.
He said the leopard was roughly 82 metres away, and that his tranquillizer rifle was only good for a maximum range of 30 metres.
In no time at all, the animal was lost in the thick underbrush.
The pugmarks were analysed afterward, and their presence was verified.
The same leopard was seen again close to the village of Kushwaha-Barwa in the Bhandaria block of the district.
A little child, aged 12, was killed by a leopard on December 28 at approximately 6 p.m. in the Kushwaha village.
Before this incident, on December 10th, the maneater attacked a young girl in Ukamad village, Latehar district.
The second incidence happened on December 14 when a small child, aged 9, was attacked in Rodo village, Garhwa district.
The third fatal leopard attack happened on December 19 in the Ranka block, where a little girl lost her life.
A similar incident occurred in the first week of January, when an old man was murdered by a wild animal in the Barwadih section of the Palamu Tiger Reserve.
Villagers said the leopard attacked the man, while the Forest Service said that the man was killed by a hyena.
The Forest Department says that leopards have been spotted multiple times in the 1,026-square-kilometer Palamu Tiger Reserve, where cameras have been set up to keep track of the animals.
There are between 90 and 110 leopards in the reserve.
More than 250 villages are spread out across the reserve's 226 square kilometres of core land.
Divisional Forest Officer (DFO) of Latehar Kumar Ashish agreed that human settlement activities inside the reserve area make things uncomfortable for the wildlife.
He said that people shouldn't get in the way too much if they want to protect wildlife.
The Chief Wildlife Warden of Jharkhand, Shashikar Samanta, has stated that a report has been sought to determine the root causes of the leopard attacks in Garhwa-Latehar.
He said that all the studies that had been done up to that point showed that people moving into the areas where wild animals live was a major cause of these kinds of things.
Samanta claimed that coal mines were obstructing the animals' paths.
According to wildlife specialist Professor DS Srivastava, leopards are not usually considered to be maneaters.
He apprised that most healthy leopards prefer to hunt in the wild, but will attack humans from hiding if they are hurt or sick, or if there isn't enough food for them in the wild.
It is generally acceptedbeieved that leopards that have changed into maneaters should be removed from the area very away, although this is not a long-term fix.
Only by making a sincere effort to comprehend the causes can the human-animal conflict be contained.—Inputs from Agencies
