14 leopard attack incidents reported in Pune dist this year
The conflict is higher in the areas that are under the jurisdiction of the Junnar forest division, said officials. Junnar division covers areas of four tehsils in the Pune district including Khed, Ambegaon, Shirur, and Junnar
The Pune district has witnessed a rise in human-leopard conflict in the last few years. In 2023, 14 such incidents in the district, as per the forest department data.
The conflict is higher in the areas that are under the jurisdiction of the Junnar forest division, said officials. Junnar division covers areas of four tehsils in the Pune district including Khed, Ambegaon, Shirur, and Junnar.
As many as twenty-two incidents were reported in 2022, at least seven incidents were reported in 2021, six in 2020, three in 2019 and six incidents in 2020.
Officials of Wildlife SOS, an organisation working with forest departments to mitigate the human-leopard conflict in the Pune district, stated, “There has been a growing trend in human-leopard conflict in Maharashtra. The expansion of human settlements into leopard habitats has concentrated leopards in limited forest regions, decreasing the space they need to survive. Factors such as habitat fragmentation, dwindling natural prey, and poaching, have increased the frequency of human-leopard interactions leading to conflicts, affecting both leopards and humans.”
“The geographical transformation, especially the sugarcane plantations that have replaced forests, has further intensified the issue. These agricultural fields and their dense foliage, mistaken as safe by mother leopards, become birthing grounds, exposing cubs to potential harm as a result of mistaken identity and increasing the risk of conflicts,” they said.
Amol Satpute, deputy conservator of forest, Junnar division, said, the department is taking several steps to mitigate the conflict situation including the implementation of rescue and awareness programmes. “We are constantly making efforts to reduce the response time in case of leopard sightings in human settlements and also in attack incidents. The forest officials are provided with training for crowd management, rescue, tranquilisation, camera trap and cage installation, etc. Also, awareness programmes are conducted in villages to make people aware of the co-existence,” he said.
“There has been an increase in leopard population in recent years. These observations are made based on leopard cubs found during reunion activity. Earlier, there were one to two cubs that used to be seen after the breeding, but recently this number has grown to three to four leopard cubs and the birth rate has increased in recent years. It also results in more conflict incidents and this situation is expected to escalate in the upcoming year,” he said.