Leopard Safari: Spotting Cats

A fortnight ago, forest workers in Rajasthan’s Jhalana Reserve Forest (JRF) had spotted the leopard flora with two cubs. Although the leopard population in India has been increasing over the years, this was particularly encouraging as the Rajasthan government announced in October 2018 that Jhalana would become home to the country’s first leopard safari. With about 29 adults and 15 cubs, 12 of whom were born this year, some say the JRF now has the world’s highest density of leopards, although officials say this may be a premature claim. Is.

A fortnight ago, forest workers in Rajasthan’s Jhalana Reserve Forest (JRF) had spotted the leopard flora with two cubs. Although the leopard population in India has been increasing over the years, this was particularly encouraging as the Rajasthan government announced in October 2018 that Jhalana would become home to the country’s first leopard safari. With about 29 adults and 15 cubs, 12 of whom were born this year, some say the JRF now has the world’s highest density of leopards, although officials say this may be a premature claim. Is.

Nonetheless, the JRF has garnered great interest from officials, tourists and wildlife experts. There are also plans to replicate its success in nearby areas, eventually building a corridor connecting it to the nearby Sariska Tiger Reserve, which is about 100 km away. “JRF is emerging as a success story in the making, but we need to nurture it,” says Deep Narayan Pandey, Rajasthan’s principal chief conservator of forests and head of the forest force. Jhalana is the best place to see leopards.

In India, leopards are often thought of as poor cousins ​​of tigers, which are among the least studied big cats. Jhalana can change that too. Lead researcher Swapnil Kumbhojkar of the Jhalana Wildlife Research Foundation, who has also served as a game ranger in South Africa’s Kruger National Park, says the JRF provides a good opportunity to improve our understanding of leopard behavior. In March 2020, in a paper he co-authored, he described one such moment. In 2019, Flora, mentioned earlier, lost two of her cubs. Officials and tourists saw him calling him while sitting on a hill. After about an hour, he saw two striped hyenas sitting under a tree with crows roaming over it, a worrying sign. She ran down the hill to reach the tree she had climbed, breaking the acacia trees and safari jeeps. Moments later, gloom descended upon tourists and officials, who saw her climbing down with a dead cub in her jaw, which she then carried to the prickly cacti of the Aravalli hills. “This is the first case” [we had observed] A leopard mother takes her dead cub away from the scavengers,” says Kumbhojkar. His team also spotted a male leopard sitting on top of a nearby hill, and they suspected that he was responsible for the death of the cub.

In a paper published last year, Kumbokjar also claimed that Jhalana had the highest density of leopard population in India at 0.86 per sq km, estimating that 25 adult leopards live in an area of ​​about 29 sq km. However, reaching an accurate figure is not easy, as it is only areas where tiger counts are often made that are equipped with camera traps. A study of tiger habitats in 20 states in 2018-19 by the Wildlife Institute of India (WII) and the National Tiger Conservation Authority (NTCA)- ‘Status of leopards, co-predators and megaherbivores’, published in July 2021- estimates That the Srivilliputhur Grizzled Squirrel Wildlife Sanctuary in Tamil Nadu had the highest leopard density at that time at 20.43 per 100 sq km. Rajasthan was estimated to have 476 leopards in three tiger reserves, including 83 in Mukundra, 105 in Ranthambore and 273 in Sariska.

While officials are unsure whether JRF now has the highest density of leopards in India, they are happy to claim that Jhalana is easier to spot than anywhere else. In terms of leopard visibility, Jhalana is comparable to Jawai Dam in Pali district of Rajasthan, where leopards occupy the hills above the plains and fields of the local people (neither JRF nor Jawai Dam are tiger reserves). Locals and hoteliers arrange private safaris in the area, as most of the land is privately owned. Although it is difficult to estimate the total number of leopards here, locals say that there are 50 to 60 spotted cats in the area.

JRF was designated a reserve forest in 1961 under the Rajasthan Forest Act 1953. A northern tropical dry deciduous forest, it is located south-east of Jaipur at an average elevation of 516 m above sea level. About 20 years ago, the state forest department started efforts to increase the planting of local vegetation in the forest. Then, in 2015, Chief Minister Vasundhara Raje ordered the JRF to develop into an area for leopard safaris and set up Project Leopard of Rajasthan. By 2017, entry restrictions had been put in place for the reserve, and in October 2018, Chief Minister Raje formally inaugurated a two-and-a-half-hour leopard safari at JRF with three routes. Today, the JRF has a 32-km boundary wall made of brick and thorn bushes, which has greatly reduced encroachment, turning it into a green island and a heat sink for the area. “The unique feature of Jhalana is that it is an urban forest located right next to the city of Jaipur,” says Sunil Mehta, a member of the Rajasthan Wildlife Board and India Head of the World Wilderness Congress. “More than three million people live on one side of the border, with about 100,000 living very close to or inside forested areas on the other.”

Since then, significant efforts have been made to develop the JRF, ranging from habitat stabilization to grassland development, with the aim of creating a forage and hunting base for the animals living within its range. Local fruit trees have been planted and encroachments removed to attract animals and birds. “Our aim is to strengthen the ecology of Jhalana and surrounding areas as much as possible through local species, rather than introducing new ones,” says Pandey. As a result, JRF also has 24 reservoirs, of which 17 are filled with borewells. Of these, a dozen are maintained by solar-powered pumps, the rest are filled by tankers. JRF is home to 220 species of plants, 33 species of mammals, 132 species of birds and 20 species of snakes. Apart from leopards, the most commonly seen animals here include hyenas, desert foxes, jackals, wild cats, desert cats, chitals and sambar.

Based on the hunting grounds of leopards, the region has a large population of wild dogs. An analysis of leopard herds has shown that the spotted cats in Jhalana prey mainly on dogs and cats, given the lack of other options. Goats and cattle are also part of their diet, as are rodents, rabbits, small Indian civets, macaques, northern plains gray langurs and mongooses. Jhalana now has a well-established food chain, with leopards feeding on dogs and cats, which in turn prey on rodents infesting the area. In contrast, in the Sariska Tiger Reserve, 84 percent of leopards are killed, according to a report by Additional Principal Chief Conservator of Forests Gobind Sagar Bhardwaj.

Jhalana’s other successes include resurrecting other species, including chitals that have been transferred from zoos here. Of the hundreds who have been relocated here, about 15 have survived and have become a kind of founding population. “They have got used to living in the wild and developed an instinct to avoid leopards,” says Pandey. He wants to develop a founding population of 20 chital and 20 sambar deer to ensure their numbers increase and has proposed similar measures for other leopard habitats in the vicinity. It is important to keep the leopard’s dependence on cattle to a minimum around Jhalana and Jaipur to avoid conflict with humans. The problem will become more acute as officials move forward with plans to set up more stores and open them up to safaris.

Forest officials and independent observers have also found that Jhalana leopards are spread up to Achrol, about 40 km away. Officials say the leopards have been frequent visits to nearby human areas, but since they are rarely seen and have some conflict with humans, they return home safely. Kumbhojka says the latest studies show that male leopards in JRF have large—but undetermined—territory, while females and their female cubs establish home ranges near their birth areas. That is why the department is considering to include the 16 sq km Amagarh range in the JRF Safari Zone, to ensure that the leopards have a large area to hunt and roam. Another priority is to start restricted safaris in 50 sq km of Nahargarh, a small forest area of ​​Achhrol and then 300 sq km in the Ramgarh range, which the government had linked with 1,100 sq km of Sariska Tiger. Reserve in 2019 to strengthen it by adding resources.

While the housing-reinforcement efforts are estimated to cost around Rs 50 crore, creating mitigation measures to connect these various areas will cost around Rs 100 crore. It is not a great price to be able to conduct a leopard safari 100 kilometers outside Jaipur before entering the Sariska Tiger Reserve.

Safari Stories

Since the introduction of leopard safaris in the Jhalana Reserve Forest (the safari was soft-launched in 2017), it has been visited by around 100,000 tourists. Twelve electric vehicles and gypsies take visitors on a two-hour tour on one of three routes through the reserve. Rajasthan’s principal chief conservator of forests, Deep Narayan Pandey, says that Jhalana is the best place to see leopards in India, just as Ranthambore is for tigers. The forest and its surrounding areas are believed to have a population of about 30 adult leopards. The success of these safaris has prompted the authorities to work on developing similar reserves in the adjoining areas, from Jhalana to Sariska Tiger Reserve, a wildlife corridor passing through Amagarh, Nahargarh and Ramgarh. The estimated cost of the housing-strengthening efforts is around Rs 50 crore, while the mitigation measures are expected to cost Rs 100 crore.