From Nigel Moore
Sanjay Kumar’s article on leopards attacking people in the Indian state of Himachal Pradesh highlights the pressures placed upon indigenous wildlife for the sake of human population expansion (This Week, 12 August). Humans are moving into the territories of big cats, destroying their habitats, and in return are losing their livestock, or worse their lives.
The immediate, and understandable feeling is that the leopard population should be culled, as proposed by the state’s chief conservator of forests, Gian Chand Gupta. However, the question must be asked: why?
There are two solutions to the problem – remove the leopards, or remove the humans and their livestock. As the latter are the invaders and the former are teetering on the verge of extinction, protected by the India’s Wildlife Protection Act, then the choice must be obvious. Although it may well be politically unpopular, the Indian government must bite the bullet and decide whether or not the act is to have any meaning. But what real hope is there of this when Himachal Pradesh’s chief conservator of forests is in favour of culling an endangered species?
