India’s leopard population grows 60 per cent since 2014

Indian leopards are thriving under new conservations rules

Credit: TAUSEEF MUSTAFA/AFP via Getty Images

India’s leopard population has increased by at least 60 per cent between 2014 and 2018 it was announced on Tuesday, following a major push to give more habitat to the endangered animals. 

The numbers of the big cats have increased from 8,000 to over 12,500, according to new Indian government figures. 

The news has delighted conservationists, raising hopes of also reversing the 30 per cent drop of leopards in sub-Saharan Africa seen since 1990, which has been caused by a combination of hunting and human-animal conflict. 

Under Narendra Modi, the Indian prime minister, the country has had a major conservation drive and assigned 140 new protected areas, specifically for tigers, since 2014.

As leopards often share habitats with tigers, this has had the unexpected bonus of allowing leopard populations to avoid human-animal contact and reproduce there safely too.

“Congratulations to all those who are working towards animal conservation. We have to keep up these efforts and ensure our animals live in safe habitats,” Mr Modi wrote on Twitter.

The government used hidden cameras to document individual leopards living in forested areas but did not monitor the prevalence of the animal in other areas they are known to reside in, including coffee and tea plantations and mountains in the Himalayas.

This means there may be even more leopards in the wild than the  study suggests.

The good news follows an announcement in June, that the number of Asiatic lions in the Gir forest in India’s eastern state of Gujarat — the only surviving population of the animal outside of Africa — had also grown from 523 in 2015 to 674 in 2020.

Again, this increase was attributed to a reduction in human-animal conflict by designating more areas of the forest for lions while simultaneously providing better veterinary facilities to treat diseases among animals.

India has also announced plans to reintroduce cheetahs into the wild, nearly 70 years after the species was declared extinct on the subcontinent.