Editorial
Man vs wild
Nepal needs more resources to deal with animals straying into human settlementsIn just six months, there have been three leopard encounters in the Capital. In the latest ‘man vs wild’, residents of Kuleshwor were greeted by a leopard on Wednesday morning. The animal was released into the Shivapuri Nagarjun National Park after the authorities tranquilised it after an hours-long effort.
Earlier, a male leopard had entered a house in Kirtipur and injured a woman on January 22. Before that, another leopard was found prowling through a resident’s bathroom in New Baneshwor on January 9. Data from the past five years suggest that on average, 10 to 15 leopards are rescued from areas around Kathmandu every year.
From rhinos destroying crops to elephants raiding villages, instances of human-wildlife conflict are all too common in Nepal. And such instances are likely to increase given the rate at which wild animal habitats are being fragmented by human settlement.
For instance, the Kathmandu Valley was once densely forested and its rim a prime habitat for leopards. But the habitat has been gradually encroached upon by humans. The story is a familiar one across the country. While the leopard population has increased due to forest conservation programmes in recent years, their food supply has not. As a result, they are not getting adequate food in their dwellings, leaving them with little option but to enter human settlements in search of food.
The conflicts between wild animals and humans do not always end in a happy note. In one incident in 2014, five leopards were killed within a week by locals in Kaski. This year too, a few leopard cubs were found dead in Pokhara. On Wednesday, a woman was killed in an attack by a leopard in Baglung.
Human-wildlife conflict is a major threat to the survival of many animals, according to the World Wildlife Fund. A lack of adequate measures to address the conflict will lead to a decline in local support for conservation programmes. This should be a matter of concern for Nepal whose animal conservation efforts have been hailed globally.
Repeated leopard-human encounters have also laid bare the absence of necessary facilities and experts to deal with these cases. In particular, there is a shortage of trained hands to control the animals, and of medical facilities to treat them before their release into the wild.
While the obvious solution to this conflict is for humans to retreat from wild habitats, that is not always practical. This requires other solutions like relocating these animals to larger habitats, while ensuring that their movement corridor is not interrupted.
As Nepal makes great strides in wildlife conservation, the increase in the number of wild animals and the concomitant decrease in their habitat coverage will make more human-wild encounters inevitable. This scenario necessitates adequate facilities and personnel to capture and treat these animals humanely before releasing them. Concerned authorities should also conduct research on habitats of predators so as to ensure they remain in the jungles and not materialise in people’s toilets.