India has 13,874 leopards, with the heart of the country — Madhya Pradesh — having the largest number of its third-biggest felid, a landmark report released by the Centre on February 29, 2024 showed. The
India, Nepal, BanglaDesh and Paksitan have agreed to develop a joint institutional mechanism to protect the growing threat to wildlife in their region. This joint mechanism has been developed because presently, wildlife is being poached in one country, stockpiled in another and then traded across the South Asia region. This lucrative trade has been pegged at $20 billion annually and is second to narcotics, a latest Interpol report has pointed out.
Wildlife officials have submitted a proposal to the State Government to create a new tiger reserve in the existing Grizzled Giant Squirrel sanctuary in Srivilliputhur in Virudhunagar district. Shekhar Kumar Niraj, Conservator of Forests, Virudhunagar Circle, says that in the recent population monitoring exercises, tigers were sighted frequently in the sanctuary's middle and upper ridges. In the recently concluded census, participants sighted an adult tigress with two of her cubs in the foothills of Rajapalayam Range of the sanctuary.
Union minister of state for forests Jayanthi Natarajan on Wednesday announced a recovery programme for saving critically endangered species and their habitats. Under the initiative, 16 species have been identified for support. This includes snow leopard, bustards (including floricans), dolphin, hangul, Nilgiri tahr, marine turtles, dugongs and coral reefs, edible nest swiftlet, Asian wild buffalo, Nicobar megapode, Manipur brow-antlered deer, vultures, Malabar civet, Indian rhinoceros, asiatic lion, swamp deer and jerdon’s courser.
With rich forest and wildlife the Northeast is known as ‘Green Lungs of India’. The region is one of the seven original biodiversity hotspots in the world, but most of its animals and birds are increasingly ending on food tables not only of the tribals who traditionally take such food but also of others including the large number of forces posted there.There are startling revelations that armed forces also indulge in hunting for food and sports in the border region.
Capturing of animals is also illegal especially if the animal is a species figures in the schedules of Wildlife Protection Act, 1972 and people who indulge in such publicity could also face action and arrests from the forest officials. Araujo’s observations come even as the Wildlife Institute of India declared that leopards (which also are animals that are “rescued”) is occupying an even greater area of Goa’s forests.
All eyes in the Nashik forest department are on the man-versus-beast conflict playing out in the district. The two recent attacks by leopards in the village of Shivare, near Niphad(about 35km from Nashik),
AHMEDABAD: There are more than 1,700 tigers in the country today. In contrast, there are just 411 Asiatic Lions, all of them in Gujarat. And yet the proposed Wildlife (Protection) Amendment Bill of the Union government maintains a deathly silence on lion preservation in the country. The draft of the bill, uploaded on the Union forest and environment ministry's website for comments, does not mention the pride of Gujarat even once while there are elaborate provisions for tiger protection. This has left many wondering if this is plain oversight, or there are other reasons for the ministry hearing the tiger's roar and turning a deaf ear to the lion's.
There was a time when the national park rangers did not need visuals to monitor the deer population in the Margalla Hills – a significant number of footprints around water bodies indicated that their population
JORHAT: Within only a week, three leopards lost their lives in Dergaon area with the third one having been found dead in Karunating tea garden on April 14 last. The other two leopards had earlier lost their lives at the hands of the villagers of Bahikhowa and Khakandguri on April 7 and April 9 respectively. The most unfortunate parts of the incidents were that the insensible villagers did not rest only on killing the animals but also chopped off their body parts and took away their flesh. It is noteworthy that during the last five years, 21 leopards lost their lives at the hands of people in Upper Assam.
With fewer than 50 individuals remaining in the wild, the Amur leopard is thought to be the world's rarest wild cat, and the creation of a new protected area in Russia is an important step towards the
