Leopard found dead on Surajkund road near Gurugram

A team from the Haryana wildlife department reached the spot on Monday morning after learning about the accident. The team has now taken the carcass for a postmortem examination to learn about the exact cause of death

The carcass of a two-year-old female leopard was found on Surajkund-Pali road in Faridabad on Monday, said officials.

Representational image.

An official from the Haryana forest department said that they learnt about the carcass on Monday morning from the traffic police department.

Raj Kumar, divisional forest officer, Faridabad, said, “I was informed by the regional inspector, wildlife, about the incident around 10.15am, after which a team reached the spot. The carcass of the two-year-old female leopard was sent for a postmortem examination. The result suggests that it died due to a head injury after being hit by a vehicle around 4am.”

Since the incident took place at the border around Asola Wildlife Sanctuary, the Delhi forest department was also informed before the jurisdiction was confirmed.A senior forest department official from Delhi said that they were informed about a leopard being hit by a vehicle on Surajkund road around 10.30am on Monday. However, the carcass had already been taken for a postmortem examination and other formalities by the Haryana forest department.

“Over the last few years, there have been quite a few leopard deaths by speeding vehicles reported from the Haryana side. The issue is that roads aren’t well lit at night; cars ram leopards that are crossing over,” the official said.

A video of the carcass started doing the rounds on Monday morning.

“This video came to me because we work on wildlife issues in the Aravallis. We have been warning all along that there is a sizeable leopard population here. There are lots of signs. I confirmed the roadkill with Haryana’s wildlife department as soon as I got the video. The boundary of Asola Bhatti sanctuary in the video. It’s a very sharp bend where vehicles cannot slowdown immediately. We have been asking for an underpass to be built,” said Sunil Harsana, wildlife activist, Mangar, Haryana.

A study published in January showed the Aravallis near Gurugram, Faridabad and Delhi can support rich biodiversity and wildlife if protected from further habitat fragmentation. The study found a total of 1,327 signs (such as scat, pug marks, scratch marks) of 13 mammal species during two seasons—winter and summer of the survey in 2019. Two species of large carnivores- leopard and striped hyena, four species of herbivores, two primate species and seven species of meso-carnivores (eg. fox, civets, mongoose, etc,) were found. Surprisingly, both Faridabad and Gurugram Aravallis were found to harbour a larger variety of mammals compared to the Asola Bhatti Sanctuary, which is a protected area. The largest number of species were recorded in Faridabad Aravallis (14), followed by Gurugram Aravallis (11), Mangar Bani (10) and least in Asola wildlife sanctuary (9). However, Mangar Bani and Gurugram Aravallis showed 30% more sighting of animals (because the forest is not as fragmented in this region as compared to Delhi or Faridabad) of animal signs per kilometre in comparison to Asola wildlife sanctuary and Faridabad Aravallis.

Harsana, a resident of Mangar village in Faridabad who has informally surveyed the Aravalli stretches in the region for years, took up formal research methodologies to document biodiversity here and was awarded the study under Worldwide Fund for Nature (WWF-India).

“There is leopard presence in that region. We have been seeing incidents of road kills for past 5-6 years, which needs to be addressed. In the past, there were talks with the Haryana government to track the movement of leopards but the project did not materialise,” said Bilal Habib, senior scientist at the Wildlife Institute of India.