In June 2015, we got an emergency call from the residents of a gated community on the outskirts of Bengaluru. The security personnel had si...
In June 2015, we got an emergency call from the residents of a gated community on the outskirts of Bengaluru. The security personnel had sighted a leopard during their nighttime rounds. We arrived at the location as soon as we could.
The complex was intended to accommodate a few families, in a parody of country-living. It abutted a beautiful dry deciduous forest, a part of which stretched into the housing complex. Owing to our interest in large cats and on the request of the community and the forest department, we initiated camera trapping in this gated community to understand how many leopards survived here and what their movement patterns were like. In addition, we initiated a study in other parts of the city’s outskirts.
Around the same time, we got a request from a school, not very far from the gated community, for similar support. The large school campus, which was spread over nearly one hundred acres, hosted dry deciduous forests and was contiguous to other reserved forests, including BM Kaaval and UM Kaaval.
These forests are nearly 1,700 acres in size and are connected to the Bannerghatta National Park through other forest patches that are under private ownership that are nearly twice...
