If all goes as per plans, Sanjay Gandhi National Park (SGNP) will kick off one of its most ambitious project in October, which will involve radio collaring five wild leopards for a first of its kind two year- long study.
Maharashtra State Forest Department is all set to complete the formalities and sign a Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) with Bengaluru based Wildlife Conservation Society (WCS) - India, who will also be sharing the cost with SGNP for this project. Sunil Limaye, Additional PCCF (Wildlife), West region confirmed that this important project will be initiated from October this year. "It's a very crucial project for Mumbai as it will help in forest department getting a much better and detailed understanding of leopards movement and usage of landscape in and around SGNP," he said adding that the project will be headed by wildlife biologist Dr Vidya Athreya from WCS-India.
Currently SGNP and its adjoining areas were home to 47 leopards as per the latest population estimation study using camera trapping exercise in 2018.
The collars would be fitted on five wild leopards from the park, which will help the SGNP management and biologists track their movement, which will provide valuable insights into their daily lives including their dispersal around SGNP, eating habits, and also most importantly the specific time when they move out.
According to senior forest officials in the past few years, leopards have been springing surprises as they have been rescued from areas, which were far away from forests like Nanipada in Mulund or even places that no one thought the big cats could reach like Korum Mall in Thane.
"All the vital data provided by the collared leopards will be scientifically analysed and would eventually help in a much effective planning as well as managing the human-wildlife conflict," Limaye added.
Prakriti Srivastava, an Indian Forest Service officer and country director, WCS-India shared, "Unlike most other collaring studies, this work is not only about the ecology of the leopard, but also about how humans and leopards interact so that management can benefit from this knowledge."
How Radio collars work:
The radio collars work by sending a signal to a satellite which obtains the time and date the signal is sent from the collar and then this information is transmitted back to the researchers who can then go and investigate where the animal is and what is it doing.
The first collared leopard from Maharashtra:
Ajoba one of the first six leopards to be radio collared for the first time in Maharashtra was rescued from a well in Ahmednagar division in 2009. Dr Vidya Athreya who carried out the radio collaring study then found that Ajoba had walked 125 km from Malshej Ghats to Mumbai, which also made it the only collared leopard to have ever been in Mumbai's landscape.
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