like tigers, these big cats are vulnerable too
Even though India has had much success in the conservation of big cats, especially tigers, it is a matter of concern that the country's safety net still does not effectively cover leopards. Illegal trade in leopard parts continues unabated, and there is little acknowledgment of the scale of the problem. A study conducted by a wildlife monitoring agency found that between 2001 and 2010, 420 seizure incidents took place involving a minimum of 1,127 leopards. Another study has revealed that around the same time, between 1994 and 2013, almost 4,000 leopard parts were seized by the country's law enforcement agencies. Moreover, according to the Wildlife Protection Society of India, some 90 leopards have already been poached for illegal trade purposes this year alone. To understand the scale of illegal trade involving leopard parts from these figures, two factors must be taken into consideration: First, customs officials generally multiply known offences by 10 to estimate the actual size of any illegal trade and second, the number of poached leopards does not include those killed in man-animal conflicts, even though it is common for the body parts of such animals to be traded as well. Also, to put these numbers into perspective, one must take into account the fact that number of leopard parts that are seized is four times more the number of tiger parts. And this is hardly a recent phenomenon. In 2008, National Geographic reported that, with tigers becoming harder to poach, leopards (which have a larger population in India) were being targeted more frequently. In 2012, the wildlife trade monitoring group, Traffic, found that for the 10 years between 2001 and 2010, at least four leopards had been poached every week in the country. This has been in spite of the fact that the leopard, along with the tiger, the snow leopard, the clouded leopard and the Asiatic lion, is listed in Schedule I of the Wild life (Protection) Act, 1972, which gives them all the highest degree of protection.
Efforts to protect the leopard, however, have not been particularly successful partly because there is little data on this big cat. leopards, which are known for their mobility and adaptability, are found across the country, and indeed, in most parts of the sub-continent but no one really knows where they are the most vulnerable. Now, a new project has sought to resolve that problem by studying the DNA of seized leopard body parts and using those biological clues to trace the geographic origins of the killed cats. According to this new study, central India in general, and Karnataka in particular, has become the hub of illegal leopard trade. Hopefully, law enforcement agencies will now use this information to crackdown on poachers. Notably, there is very little domestic demand for leopard parts — the trade in this area is driven almost entirely by foreign demand, which might actually make it easier for the authorities to control.