In what has set off alarm bells in the state forest department, a female leopard has been found poached at Yavatmal with her paws and organs missing.
This comes days after a leopard that was found drowned in a well at Kinvat in neighbouring Nanded district had its paws and teeth removed. In January, three leopards were found dead, two in Nagpur and one in Chandrapur, due to unnatural causes like poisoning and snare trapping respectively.
While conservation efforts focus on the tiger as an apex predator and a flagship species, Maharashtra, which has a healthy population of leopards, has seen a loss of 458 of these since 2010, of which 74 were due to poaching. The number of leopard deaths due to accidents stands at 162, and 222 are due to natural causes.
This points to how the leopard, which like the tiger, is a Schedule I animal (listed under this schedule of the Wildlife Protection Act, 1972) entitling it to the highest degree of protection, needs more conservation efforts being directed towards it.
According to the state forest department's figures, the year 2016 saw the highest toll registered, at 89 (since 2010), of which seven leopards died due to poaching.
"On Wednesday, we found a dead four-year-old female leopard at Takli village near Yavatmal. We suspect that a goat's carcass was poisoned to kill the leopard whose paws, teeth, whiskers, and tail were cut. A post-mortem was conducted and the samples sent for analysis," a forest department official told DNA.
The post-mortem detected that the leopard had eaten a goat, which may have been poisoned.
Another forest department official said that on March 4, a leopard had drowned in a well at Kinvat in Nanded in the area controlled by the Forest Development Corporation of Maharashtra (FDCM). The animal was extricated from the well and its paws and teeth were cut off, the official said, adding that, however, they did not suspect an organised poaching racket to be involved.
It is estimated that India's leopard population is around 12,000 to 14,000, with tiger bearing areas having around 7,910 of these big cats, according to the 2014 tiger census. In contrast, the statistics of the National Tiger Conservation Authority (NTCA) show that tiger mortalities in Maharashtra between 2010 and 2016-end stand at 65.
Leopard deaths:
2016:
Natural: 53
Accidents: 29
Poaching: 7
TOTAL: 89
2015:
Natural: 29
Accidents: 31
Poaching: 6
TOTAL: 66
2014:
Natural: 33
Accidents: 23
Poaching: 9
TOTAL: 65
2013:
Natural: 17
Accidents: 19
Poaching: 7
TOTAL: 43
2012:
Natural: 25
Accidents: 29
Poaching: 14
TOTAL: 68
2011:
Natural: 37
Accidents: 18
Poaching: 15
TOTAL: 70
2010:
Natural: 28
Accidents: 13
Poaching: 16
TOTAL: 57
