From the park to IIT-B, you go a long way big boy

Leopards from Sanjay Gandhi National Park (SGNP) are travelling as far as Aarey Milk Colony and IIT Bombay, indicates the study of monitoring the density and movement of leopards carried out in 2017.

As per Wildlife Biologist Nikit Surve, who carried out the study, several leopards whose images were captured during the camera trapping exercise in various areas of Aarey Milk Colony as well as IIT-Mumbai were from SGNP.

"We got around nine leopards who are from SGNP but were camera trapped from Aarey. Meanwhile, three individual leopards were resident of Aarey Colony. One leopard captured regularly during the 22 days of camera trapping inside the campus of IIT Bombay too is a resident of SGNP. This indicates that the leopards do not understand human-made boundaries and will move places where they get easy prey," informed Surve.

For the first time, a leopard with a dog kill in its mouth was photographed during the camera trapping exercise. 

"A leopard L28 most of whose locations were inside SGNP's boundary was photographed with a dog kill inside Aarey Milk Colony again stressing that it was the abundant dog population in some of the areas that were the cause behind leopards moving outside SGNP boundary," Surve said.

RUSTY SPOTTED CAT

• During the camera trapping exercise, apart from the leopard, an image of rusty spotted cat, which are known as the world’s smallest cats in the wild, was also captured moving inside IIT Bombay indicating that the campus still plays hosts to rare wildlife flora and fauna, apart from leopards.