Geetanjali Krishna: Who's the menace here?

It’s from a leopard,” the guide said briefly. I stared at the inoffensive-looking mound of poop and weighed my options. We were surrounded by an oak forest too dense in parts to penetrate. The nearest habitation was barely two kilometres away. So near… yet so very far, I thought. We were on a mountain trail that locals rarely frequented. They preferred the bus — it was quicker, and as I stared at the poop again, probably safer.

“Don’t worry,” said the guide, “if we see a big cat, we’ll just stand still … they are such secretive beings that coming face to face with us will probably ruin their morning!” Leopards, said he, were largely nocturnal, and unlikely to be out at noon anyway. He also added that in the two-odd decades that he’d been in these jungles, he’d come across leopards barely a dozen times. Yet I unconsciously stepped up the pace, and within the next half hour, was at a tea shop in Gugukhan, a village not far from Nainital.

Sitting with a cup of tea warming my hands, I wondered how that leopard managed to survive, living as close as it did to the village. “Actually, the leopard hasn’t chosen to live near us — it’s we who’re inching closer and closer to it,” said the guide. The forests around Pangot, now protected, are getting hemmed in by farms and orchards. Thus the leopard’s habitat has shrunk beyond belief, and so has its prey base.

“For villagers here, leopards are pests. They prey on cattle, kill watchdogs and make it difficult for villagers to walk through jungle paths at night,” he said. Whenever a leopard carries away a cow or strays into a remote village, it causes consternation and fear miles around. “See how remote these settlements are — no wonder people here see leopards and panthers as big threats to their safety!” said the guide.

Next day, at Sattal lake, we met a rattled boatman with a story to tell. “My cousin and I walk about 15 km every day from our village to Sattal with eight other young men,” said he, “just before dawn today, we came across a dead cow in a small clearing in the jungle.” As the men were walking past the carcass, they heard a polite cough. Then a louder one. When the men turned around, they found themselves practically face to face with a leopard!

“We stared at it, and it stared back. It seemed to have no desire to attack us,” said the boatman, “then it disappeared into the nearby bushes….” Apparently, the leopard they’d met was a common sight in the jungle, and was generally considered the peace-loving sort. Yet, some of the boatmen who’d seen it that morning were talking in hushed tones about what they termed as the “leopard menace”.

But who was actually being menaced? This year alone, 20 leopards have died in suspicious circumstances in Uttarakhand — some victims of road accidents, others that of hunters. As many as 268 leopard deaths have been recorded in the state during the past five years. “Some leopards have, of course, been victims of poachers, but many have just been killed out of fear,” said the boatman, adding, “people feel threatened if a big cat is seen close to their village!” At this rate, the common leopard may not remain that common anymore….

I wondered aloud how one could convince villagers that leopards weren’t necessarily a threat to them. The boatman replied, with a faraway look in his eyes, “Just let more of them come face to face with these beautiful beasts. Once they look at a leopard in the eye and watch it melt away into the jungle, maybe their fear will melt away too!”