The wolf and the bear cannot frighten the farmers of Bijnor. This is not surprising, because they do not live in Bavaria or Trentino, but in India, where completely different predatory animals sneak through the night. Given the abundance of predatory neighbours, Indian readers would find it hard to understand why Markus Söder is already denouncing the hunting of animals even before they have immigrated in large numbers. An argument over ghost bears? People in Asia are used to something different.
In India, humans have lived with leopards and tigers for centuries. And yes, it can be life threatening, on both sides.
It is obvious that the myth of the cat, as conceived by the writer Rudyard Kipling in the “Jungle Book” – Baghira, the good, Shir Khan, the bad – belongs to the domain of colonial fairy tales. In any case, it has nothing to do with everyday life in Bijnor: Because there – despite the fictional philanthropist Baghira – there is leopard alarm.
In the space of three months, the spotted cats killed seven people in the northeast area of the capital Delhi. (Black leopards, which Kipling once used as a model for his panther, are rare.) The scale of the attacks makes even wildlife-savvy India sit up and take notice, as it doesn’t match experience. common. It has long been thought that the leopard in particular could manage to occupy niches alongside humans. No other large predator is considered as adaptable; none live – and survive – so often in the immediate vicinity of large agglomerations.
Even in the megalopolis of Mumbai, where leopards populate a national park on the outskirts of the city, they stalk the streets at night to capture stray dogs. Without knowing it, the pooches doze on the asphalt. These are fast food for the cat, easier to catch than deer or boar.
Leopards are generally adept at avoiding humans. It’s your life insurance. Things are different now in Bijnor. The situation there has worsened and it is not yet possible to assess what this means for the future of Indian leopards. Nationally, there are only about 13,000 animals left, few in a state that is home to 1.5 billion people. But India has a population of cats that could survive – if experts can defuse conflicts like Bijnor’s. Leopards are strictly protected, but if the mood changes over a large area, the animals have little chance.
Sugar cane is grown on an increasing area in Bijnor. On the other hand, the leopard gives good coverage. On the other hand, their areas are now partly populated by farmers who work there. It is possible that leopards, which previously did not consider humans as prey at all, are now attacking them. Forest authorities have already captured ten animals in the district and moved them to a protected area. But the fear in Bijnor remained.
So far, researchers know too little to be able to reliably interpret the attacks. Only one thing is certain: things will get tougher for the Indian leopards.
