Case Report
Curtailing Human-Leopard Conflict Using Wildlife Forensics: A Case Study from Himachal Pradesh, India
Puneet Pandey1,2, Vipin Sharma1, Sujeet Kumar Singh1, Deepa Goel2 and Surendra Prakash Goyal1*
1Wildlife Institute of India, Dehradun, Uttarakhand, India
2Dr. A.P.J. Abdul Kalam Technical University, Lucknow, Uttar Pradesh, India
- Corresponding Author:
- Surendra Prakash Goyal
Wildlife Forensic and Conservation Genetics Cell
Wildlife Institute of India, Chandrabani
Dehradun, Uttarakhand, India
Tel: 01352640224
E-mail: [email protected]
Received Date: June 21, 2016; Accepted Date: July 27, 2016; Published Date: July 30, 2016
Citation: Pandey P, Sharma V, Singh SK, Goel D, Goyal SP (2016) Curtailing Human-Leopard Conflict Using Wildlife Forensics: A Case Study from Himachal Pradesh, India. J Forensic Res 7:331. doi:10.4172/2157-7145.1000331
Copyright: © 2016 Pandey P, et al. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.
Abstract
Recent changes in the land use pattern have severely impacted wildlife, specifically large carnivores like leopards, by reducing natural habitat and prey base. Being highly adaptable, with a distribution more outside than inside the protected areas, leopard very often attacks human and livestock. In human-leopard conflicts, once an animal is declared as man-eater, it is either translocated or killed by officials as per Wildlife (Protection) Act 1972 of India. Identification of conflicting leopard is very difficult and sometimes lead to the castigation of innocent animal. Here, we describe the individualization of a leopard from one such human-leopard conflict in Bilaspur district of Himachal Pradesh, India using modern molecular genetic techniques. The methodology suggested in this study would be of great importance in correct identification of conflicting animals.
