Maharashtra’s proposal to curb leopard attacks by releasing goats reveals the risks of quick fixes that ignore urban ecology, scientific evidence, and long-term human-animal conflict mitigation
The rapid urbanisation and uncontrolled outward expansion of metropolitan cities across India have severely diminished the natural buffers that not only protect cities from natural calamities but also maintain a safe distance between wildlife habitats and human settlements. With highways, informal settlements, housing colonies, and industrial estates trampling forests, mangroves, and wetlands, cities surrounded by ecologically sensitive terrain, such as Gurugram (Haryana), Bengaluru (Karnataka), Palasbari and Kaliabor (Assam), and Baripada (Odisha), are witnessing increasing encounters between wildlife and people. Increasing leopard attacks on humans and livestock in the Mumbai Metropolitan Region are primarily due to the disappearing boundary between the Sanjay Gandhi National Park and densely populated human habitats.
The recent rise in leopard attacks across several urban and semi-urban regions in Maharashtra evoked an unusual response. The state’s forest minister has suggested releasing goats worth INR 1 crore into the forests surrounding these densely populated areas in each district. The goats are supposed to act as ‘sufficient prey,’ preventing leopards from straying into the urban fringes in search of food. The minister also stated that the state had sought the downlisting of leopards from the Wildlife Protection Act’s Schedule I to Schedule II. This move would significantly dilute their legal protection and offer the state enhanced flexibility to capture, relocate, or, after due authorisation, even eliminate leopards for more effective management of human-animal conflict.
Despite human settlements increasing the availability of food resources, leopards still obtain up to 80 percent of their total dietary requirements within forest areas. These findings contradict the premise that leopards venture into human settlements due to food scarcity, showing that human-animal conflict arises from proximity, not hunger.
While these proposals reflect genuine public concern for human safety, they also raise questions about how policymakers and politicians understand urban-ecological dynamics and whether such unique responses constitute a sustainable solution to growing human-animal conflicts.
With 1,985 recorded in 2022, Maharashtra is home to India’s second-largest leopard population, after Madhya Pradesh. The Sanjay Gandhi National Park (SGNP), at the heart of the Mumbai Metropolitan Region, is home to 54 leopards, with the world’s highest density of ~26 leopards/100 sq km. However, they are not confined within the SGNP’s core. Data analysis from GPS-enabled camera-traps and radio collars indicates that they routinely move across the core areas and into buffer zones, crossing not just peripheral tribal hamlets and institutional areas, but often infiltrating gated residential societies at SGNP’s boundary.
Thus, understanding their prey base is key to mitigating leopard attacks on humans in these areas. Research evaluating their food patterns across Maharashtra indicates that the accumulation of waste on the forest fringes attracts a large number of domestic stray animals, including dogs, pigs, and cats, which in turn attract predators from the forests. For example, domestic stray dogs make up nearly 40 percent of leopards’ diet, with livestock, rodents, and small wild prey, including monkeys, accounting for the rest. However, despite human settlements increasing the availability of food resources, leopards still obtain up to 80 percent of their total dietary requirements within forest areas. These findings contradict the premise that leopards venture into human settlements due to food scarcity, showing that human-animal conflict arises from proximity, not hunger.
The proposal to release goats into forests to reduce leopard attacks also overlooks evidence on the negative impacts of artificially provisioning prey to carnivores. For example, National Tiger Conservation Authority guidelines warn of the adverse consequences of the artificial feeding of carnivores, permitting it only in exceptional cases, primarily during temporary captivity for rehabilitation. Feeding animals may lead to their “habituation,” leading to “human-wildlife interface problems like livestock or human depredation,” the guidelines caution.
Moreover, goats are inherently domestic. If released en masse in forests, the goats will likely cluster around the city edges to rummage for food or roam near human settlements. Readily available food near city fringes would draw leopards closer to the humans, contradicting the minister’s proposal that well-fed leopards will stay within the confines of the forests.
National Tiger Conservation Authority guidelines warn of the adverse consequences of the artificial feeding of carnivores, permitting it only in exceptional cases, primarily during temporary captivity for rehabilitation. Feeding animals may lead to their “habituation,” leading to “human-wildlife interface problems like livestock or human depredation,” the guidelines caution.
Besides such veterinary and ecological challenges, releasing goats inside forests also poses ethical dilemmas. Studies have documented the rapid spread of various diseases, including brucellosis and foot-and-mouth disease, from domestic livestock to wild herbivores. Mass artificial feeding of wild animals can also disrupt the delicate ecological balance between species that have evolved over millennia across diverse ecosystems. Additionally, treating livestock as prey will likely invite severe societal resistance, as evidenced by the public outcry against the judicial orders to round up stray dogs in Delhi and put them in shelter homes and to ban pigeon-feeding in Mumbai.
Crucially, however, the proposal completely deviates from the argument that the real drivers of conflict stem from uncontrolled urban expansion. Peripheral growth of cities has led to: i) neglected solid waste management, allowing the breeding of large stray dog populations, ii) haphazard growth of informal settlements close to the forest area, leading to waste accumulation, and iii) poorly-lit residential areas and paths. These factors primarily contribute to increased human-animal conflicts.
Maharashtra’s parallel demand of downlisting leopards from Schedule I to Schedule II of the Wildlife (Protection) Act 1972 could prove to be equally detrimental. Schedule I provides sweeping legal protection to endangered wild animals, including the tiger. Schedule I animals are protected from capture, hunting, poaching, trading, or relocation, unless backed by strong justification and rigorous oversight. Its violations invite severe penal action, including imprisonment. Downlisting leopards to Schedule II would make them open to interpretation as threats to human life or property, enabling their control through capture or hunting, with the Chief Wildlife Warden’s approval.
Any hasty, reactive downlisting can be disastrous for the leopards, which have survived the vagaries of development primarily because of the legal protection they have received.
Such downlisting risks shifting the state’s focus from conservation to a capture- or hunting-oriented approach. But even this approach may not be enough, as indiscriminate capture and translocation of leopards have often heightened human-animal conflict. Field research on translocated leopards has revealed that many return to their original capture site within 25 days, often covering distances of more than 250 km. Travelling such long distances through unfamiliar terrain, these leopards often create new conflict zones along the way.
Several global examples, including in North America, where wolves are legally hunted to prevent livestock losses, and in several African countries, where trophy hunting is used as a conservation tool, show that removing legal protections for carnivores most often does not yield the desired results. These examples provide valuable lessons for India to observe caution before altering the legal protection framework. Any hasty, reactive downlisting can be disastrous for the leopards, which have survived the vagaries of development primarily because of the legal protection they have received.
Maharashtra already has a model of successful human-animal conflict mitigation. Between 2003 and 2015, when leopard encounters peaked, the SGNP adopted a strategy based on research conducted in collaboration with the Wildlife Institute of India. Avoiding capture and translocation, the strategy focused on training of emergency teams, night-time patrolling, scientific monitoring, and sustained media and community engagement, leading to a noticeable reduction in fatal encounters. Sustained reductions in human-animal conflicts thus require consistent, research-driven interventions that involve the community and consider the delicate ecological equations of shared spaces.
It’s not that leopards have developed a liking for urban life; it’s that the development frameworks, zoning, and land-use changes in Indian cities have been insensitive to their ecological realities. India’s urban policy must therefore consider the wildlife-urban interface as central to city planning, going beyond merely identifying green patches in master plans.
The challenges faced by various cities in Maharashtra, including Mumbai, Pune, and Nashik, reflect a nationwide urban phenomenon. For example, in Jaipur, too, leopards regularly stray into residential neighbourhoods. People in Dehradun and Guwahati regularly, and often fatally, encounter elephants, while clashes with sloth bears are becoming increasingly common around the outskirts of Bengaluru. Though framed as wildlife problems, much of this conflict stems from rising human encroachment on animal habitats.
It’s not that leopards have developed a liking for urban life; it’s that the development frameworks, zoning, and land-use changes in Indian cities have been insensitive to their ecological realities. India’s urban policy must therefore consider the wildlife-urban interface as central to city planning, going beyond merely identifying green patches in master plans.
This will require secure ecological corridors, flawless solid and liquid waste management practices based on the 3Rs principle of reduce, reuse and recycle, mass awareness campaigns, and a multistakeholder effort including the ULBs, state forest departments, police, and civil society organisations.
Dhaval Desai is a Senior Fellow and Vice President at the Observer Research Foundation.
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Dhaval is a Vice President - Platforms and Communities at Observer Research Foundation, Mumbai. His spectrum of work covers diverse topics ranging from urban renewal ...
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