Mumbai: Study lifts veil on behaviour of leopards in city

The leopard radiocollaring project undertaken at Sanjay Gandhi National Park SGNP involving two males and three females has shed light on the secret lives of the big cats Officials have learnt that the leopardesses have a smaller home range compared to their male counterparts A home range refers to the area in which an animal lives and moves on a periodic basisThe smallest home range recorded for an adult female L36 was 258 sq km while the largest for an adult male L93 was 8426 sq kmThe Maharashtra forest department and the Wildlife Conservation SocietyIndia undertook a collaborative research project to study these elusive creatures from August 2020 to August 2022 and radiotelemetry was adopted for the first time in two phases to gain an understanding of leopardsrsquo secret life in a unique habitat The project sought to understand leopardsrsquo interactions with humans in an urban landscape Its other main objectives were to understand how the big cats utilise space and time in the SGNP landscape and how they move across major roads and highways such as Ghodbunder RoadThe study is titled Understanding leopards and their interactions with people dispersal home range size amp habitat use of leopards in a humandominated landscape of Mumbai using GPS telemetryThe collared leopard individuals were monitored by field staff and researchers for three to four months by actual onfield tracking A total walk effort of approximately 700 km was recordedSGNP Director G Mallikarjun said ldquoFemale leopards showed smaller home ranges than male leopards Overall the home ranges documented in this study were smaller as compared to other studies from India probably due to the adequate availability of preyrdquoUsing camera traps the researchers documented territorial overlap between leopards Interestingly the researchers also noted a maximum of nine leopards using one of the collared leopardrsquos L126 territoriesAlso Read ECs allotment of Shiv Sena name symbol is prospective decision NarwekarAdditional Principal Chief Conservator of Forest APCCF Dr V Clement Ben said ldquoThe findings of the study also pointed out that leopard diet mainly comprised domestic prey available throughout the periphery of SGNP The researchers identified 97 feeding events between all five collared leopards of which about 7938 per cent comprised domestic prey It was also observed leopards making kills of spotted deer and sambarsrdquoThe researchers also documented two collared females L36 and L95 with cubs during our monitoring period and both gave birth to a litter of cubs towards the end of the summer season in 2022 One of the collared females was documented mating during the telemetry projectIt was also documented that adult males L93 and L126 crossed linear intrusions like railways and state highways during the night hoursldquoThe leopards were mostly active at night during the day they rested inside SGNP We also documented instances where leopards were near humans but the latter were unaware of thisrdquo said MallikarjunAn unprecedented studyMumbairsquos history with radiocollared leopards goes back ten years when Ajoba a radiocollared male leopard from Malshej Ghat walked approximately 120 km and reached SGNPThe manner in which leopards occupy the humandominated landscape with minimal conflict is interesting The study helped researchers understand how leopards utilise readily available food resources along the periphery of the SGNP but actively avoid humans While this is the firstofitskind study on urban leopards in India we hope this work will increase our understanding of the otherwise secretive big cat of Mumbai an official said