Madhya pradesh has the highest number of leopards (3,421), followed by Karnataka (1,783) and Maharashtra (1,690). These three states together account for more than 50% of the leopards in the country’s tiger habitats, serving as a common ecosystem for different species of wild animals. The numbers have risen despite the fact that leopards are often the victims of human-animal conflicts as they lose themselves in human dwellings or even become victims of the road.
“The increase in the population of tigers, lions and leopards in recent years is a testament to conservation efforts and the country’s fledgling wildlife and biodiversity,” said Environment Minister Prakash Javadekar, publishing the ‘Status of leopards in India, 2018 report. The increase in the number of big cats over the last decade and a half indicates their resilience and ability to recover if a safe environment is provided.
Although leopards are also found in non-forested habitats (coffee and tea plantations), higher elevations in the Himalayas, arid landscapes, and most of the northeastern states, the National Tiger Conservation Authority (NTCA) in association with State forest departments only in Tiger habitats such as the big cat serve as umbrella species for other wildlife such as leopard in protected areas.
Since non-forested habitats are not taken into account for the enumeration, the population estimate can be considered as the minimum number of leopards in each of the landscapes. Estimates show that leopards have occupied almost 1.86 lakhs of square kilometers of forest area in the country.
The estimation of the leopard population was carried out in three steps: walking through the forests in search of signs of animals and prey species; using satellite data for habitat characteristics and human influence and camera traps to capture images of leopards. The camera traps were placed in 26,838 locations spread over 141 sites for tag recovery analysis.
A total of 51,337 leopard photographs were obtained from camera traps, resulting in the capture of photos of 5,298 individuals, including 825 adult and subadult animals. An artificial intelligence (AI) -based image processing tool was used to automatically tag and segregate the camera trap images into species.
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