Khanapur could very well serve as model for authorities to resolve manleopard conflict that has been dogging forests.
Though Khanapur jungles boast a healthy leopard population, there have been few cases of the big cats straying into villages over the last three decades.
The reason is attributed to a well preserved habitat, prey base and awareness on the part of villagers.
There are dozens of hamlets in the pockets of Khanapur jungles. Though villagers have many stories of attacks by bears, bisons, elephants and snake bites, there has not been a single case of leopard attack.
A couple of years ago, Ramesh Shankar Patil, a gram panchayat member and resident of Chapoli village located deep in the Khanapur jungles was attacked by a bear and was compensated by the forest department. There are a dozen leopards moving around Chapoli and surrounding forests and are even spotted in the village at nights. Yet, they have never attacked human beings.
Deputy conservator of forests Girish Hosur says there are three reasons for mananimal conflicts. ''Lack of prey base, shortage of forest area and fragmentation of habitat,'' he says. In humananimal conflicts, the question about who is trespassing whose territory crops up, he says. Hosur says the leopard is a territorial animal and keeps to its territory which it marks with its urine. In most cases, humans have encroached forest areas and so wild animals like leopards have very little place to claim to be theirs. This is the reason for the conflict, he says.
As far as Khanapur jungles are concerned, it is huge, has a good prey base and has everything that ensures that leopards don't confront human beings, says Hosur. He says villagers too are aware of forest laws and prefer not to disturb wildlife. Though a couple of incidents of leopards attacking cattle had been report some time ago, they were attributed to cattle straying into the jungles, he says.
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