Part of: GS Prelims and GS-III – Environment; Biodiversity
In news
Union Minister for Environment released the Status of Leopards report.
Key takeaways
The leopard population has been estimated using camera trapping method.
There are 12,852 leopards in India as of 2018 as compared to the previous estimate of 7910 conducted in 2014, an increase of 60% in 4 years.
The highest concentration of the leopard in India is estimated to be in Madhya Pradesh (3,421) followed by Karnataka (1,783) and Maharashtra (1,690).
Recent meta-analyses of leopard status and distribution suggest 48–67% range loss for the species in Africa and 83–87% in Asia.
In India, leopards have experienced a possibly human-induced 75-90% population decline in the last ~120-200 years.
In Indian subcontinent, poaching, habitat loss, depletion of natural prey and conflict are major threats to leopard populations.
All these have resulted in changing the species status from ‘Near Threatened’ to ‘Vulnerable’ by the IUCN.
As for region-wise distribution, the highest number of 8,071 leopards were found in central India and eastern ghats.
In the northeast hills, there are just 141 leopards.
Do you know?
The leopard was estimated across forested habitats in tiger range areas of the country but other leopard occupied areas such as non-forested habitats, higher elevations in the Himalayas, arid landscapes and majority of North East landscape were not sampled.
Therefore, the population estimation should be considered as minimum number of leopards in each of the landscapes.
