“Leopard Attack”
Chamundi hill which is bang in the middle of the lovely Mysore city is a safe sanctuary for lot of wildlife. A lot of my friends from India Nature Watch mysore almost go there every weekend to photograph the wildlife and you can see the whole collection here and here. Its known not only for its great bird diversity but also a healthy population of leopards. If you see the link above, a lot of people have been photographing this lovely leopard even till few weeks ago… totally peaceful in its habitat.
Yesterday one of these leopards came onto a nearby road and when people saw it in the bush, they crowded around it and since it had no way to go out, the animal had to attack some people to escape the crowds and in the confusion it ran towards the city instead of the hill again. People chased the leopard in hundreds and eventually after fighting for many hours it had to give in and it finally died because of all the stress that it went though.
Press ofcourse have had a field day with this. DH ran a sane article, but the local papers went totally over the board using phrases like “It was a few brave and over-zealous members of the public who finally held down the leopard which terrorised and at the same time entertained hundreds of onlookers “.
The issue here was not the leopard but as usual the crowd management. If the crowd had not gathered around the leopard, it would have been any other day in the city. If the people and forest dept had not chased it around, the leopard would have found its way back safely into the wooded area. Yesterday 3 other leopards were stoned to death in other parts of Karnataka.
For those who are interested, you must read this manual made by Vidya Athreya titled Human-Leopard conflict Management guidelines. This work came out after the leopard attacks and relocations in Mumbai few years ago. If you live in a place with close proximity to leopards, you must read this and also educate the local forest department and police to make sure they handle these situations well in the future.
Yet another sorry day for the leopards and those who love the wonderful animal…:-( The attitude of some section of the humans sucks!!!
This reminds me of a similar incidence you had encountered in Valparai.
Leopards are living in chamundi hills for decades now. Most of the mysoreans living near the hill have seen these leopards which are friendly and ve hold on to their own. After ages of this healthy co-existence, the media today reports that it attacked a girl in police quarters and hence it was beaten to death !!?? Is this acceptable ?
Acording to the Forest dept count, there were 4 leopards in chamundi hills. One cub is down, ive really started worrying about the other 3 left !
It attacked the girl coz the leopard was chased into the police quarters compound. One cannot help the people reactions, but I wish the dept or police did something more decent in handling the situation.
it was sad to read this news in today’s paper.. death of human-leapord conflicts are increasing.. and people do not leave the animal to itself, if spotted..
yeh leopards are always spotted
It seems the people feared that it had tasted human blood and it’d become a man-eater! 🙁
Chamundi Hill is going to be ruined! Fatso Prince of Mysore, wants to create a luxury hotel with a night club atop the hill!
Govt. has given a part of the hill for lease(Rs. 1 per year for many years) for running a ropeway, to a seedy Construction Group on profit sharing basis!! :((
While the district administration wants to create a natural/botanical park at the foot of the hill, the are is getting developed with many hotels and spas coming around.
Got to stop these things from happening.
ravi
man eater?!
Has there been any recorded incident when a leopard attached humans as prey, other than the kids aged less than 7-8yrs?? Even in those cases, their primary target was cattle/dogs and not humans.
I doubt that. anyone has info on that?
Yes, there have been several instances when grown men have been mauled and atatcked by leopards. many killed. What happens is as their habitat gets smaller and smaller they have less and less to eat, so they take a shot at man. When the realise how easy prey we are compared to wild animals, they never stop hunting us. It is however out own fault, and many of these leopard attacks are instigated by humans and not the animal. but I assure you, leopards are quite capable man eaters, some leopards have aquired hundreds of human kills.
My God the circus that accompanied that poor leopard was too much. At least a 100 dumb asses all trying to run after it instead of standing at a safe distance. And as I am watching I can see some cops defending themselves by beating it with their lathis. And then S comes in and says “that poor thing died!”
Jeeeez!
You see that it was a beautiful animal.
Amazing police dept, amazing forest dept and to support all of them a great news paper. Now they seem to have deleted the article. I guess everybody there wanted to be Tippu Sulthan.
this is the second time after reading your posts that i ve been depressed all day. but then thats the truth i guess. I really dont understand why the news channels cant use their reach to spread some quality information rather than trying to cash in on the hysteria.
ofcourse there have been.
read Kenneth Anderson 🙂
A Tiger Roars by Kenneth Anderson.
the story is called ‘manhater of ….’
sad to know abt this when so many are trying to conserve the leopard! 🙁
kallu, hope to meet u soon and see how I can help the conservation prog. will buzz u.
Sad and pathetic! Can we take any further step in educating about safe procedure to tackle Leopards on street to people in and around hill? including officers?
[…] always. You can read Kalyan‘s blog about other incidences involving leopard-human conflict here and […]
Really Sad, have to make an initiative to save these creatures, Chamundi Hills has a lot of faunal biodiversity, and the media sucks!!