Spot Spotting
Mark Hager © 2015
Taking the lead on Lankan leopard learning
Early morning, late September, dense high-tree jungle, Willpattu National Park. We’re
here in search of the Sri Lankan leopard, but we’re not especially concerned with seeing any.
This search is deeper, probing demographics, movements, habits, habitat, prey and prospects, not
to mention sex life, social life, communication and adaptation. With me in jeep are three big cat
scientists, husband and wife senior scientists Andrew Kittle and Anjali Watson, joined by grad
student Gyanada Acharya, operating under the Wilderness and Wildlife Conservation Trust’s
‘Leopard Project,’ along with trusty tracker, Bimal and driver Hemantha. Andrew and Anjali are
retrieving camera traps set three weeks earlier along dirt tracks, extracting their accumulated data
for later download and analysis. A little later, we move the cameras to spots (sorry) further into
the jungle. Rains will be coming soon after the long dry season so Anjali and Andrew are
anxious to complete their surveys before dirt roads go gummy.
Using GPS, the scientists maintain a shifting grid in camera placements, facilitating
meaningful data analysis. Each trap consists of two cameras aimed across the track, one on each
side. When a leopard or any other animal trips invisible beams they emit, the cameras fire so that
the subject is captured from two sides in the same instant. Anjali and Andrew can identify
individual leopards from the shapes and patterns of their spots. With thousands of photos and
recorded times they can determine which animals and how many frequent a given location and
they can track ranges of particular cats.
Leopards have been called the perfect predator: expert in ambush, stealthy and patient,
then quick in attack and deadly in bite. Having outlasted rival cousin lions and tigers which
roamed here prehistorically, she is modern Sri Lanka’s sole land-based apex hunter. Because
Lankan leopards have no direct competition, they are possibly more active in daylight hours than
leopards elsewhere and less likely to haul heavy kill up trees so as to fend off thieves. An island
the size of today’s Sri Lanka could not support two apex predators, though lions and tigers
perhaps shared the landscape when low sea levels allowed land bridge migration with India. As
one of eight or so recognized subspecies, the Lankan leopard is the only one to enjoy apex
predator status. As Andrew points out, this possible ‘keystone’ role means that studying leopard
here is simultaneously study of its prey and by extension the whole ecosystem. It also means that
leopards are key to prevailing ecosystem balances. If leopards decline in number, for example,
prey species proliferate and whatever they eat comes under pressure.
At a track junction, we exchange banter with tourists in another jeep, who jokingly blame
the scientists for the fact that they, like we, have seen little by way of wildlife all morning. I
explain that wildlife does a vanishing act whenever I climb into a safari vehicle. In general, when
Anjali and Andrew encounter jeeps reporting leopard sightings, they are likely to head off in the
opposite direction: chasing random sightings is too distracting from their main work. As we
bounce along between sites, however, we observe leopard tracks in the sandy surface of the so-
called road. An adult male has passed here in the past few hours. Leopards use the roads for ease
of movement but also as territorial boundaries, patrolled with scent markings. Adult male prints
are squarish, with quirky little features that you can use to distinguish different individuals if you
know how to look. Lacking such features, female prints are useless for this purpose. There are
3.5 adult females for each adult male at Yala national park and the Project seeks to ascertain
whether a comparable ratio prevails at Willpattu. Scientists map three different types of range,
overlapping, onto the territory. Females occupy territory based on food supply for themselves
and their young. Males occupy larger territories based on access to females as well as prey.
Transient leopards, mainly males, defend no particular territory but nevertheless move within
mappable ranges. Since male and female cubs get born in roughly equal numbers, males must
suffer high attrition to yield the skewed sex ratio among adults. Sources of attrition may include
fights with other males, contending with more dangerous prey due to territorial exclusions from
the easier stuff, malnutrition and its concomitant health problems, and roaming near human
settlements whose inhabitants may kill nuisance animals.
By late morning, Anjali and Andrew are strapping camera traps into their new locations.
When we reach the right general area for a trap as informed by GPS, tracker Bimal proves his
expertise at quickly finding trees properly aligned on opposite sides of the track for camera
placements. Andrew credits him with a sixth sense about picking the right trees, a valuable
‘tracking’ skill unrelated to finding wildlife. With axe and machete, Bimal and Hemantha set
about clearing underbrush between the selected trees and the sandy dirt track. Optimal
positioning puts the two cameras far enough from the track to capture the whole animal in photos
but close enough to catch the spots clearly. The basic operation for each trap should not take
long, but problems invariably pop up. At our first installation site, there is suddenly a traffic jam
as six or so safari jeeps squeeze past us and each other. It takes about ten minutes to clear, during
which no work can be done. Tourist bungalows sit nearby, which explains the pile up of wildlife
enthusiasts. During the pause, Andrew points out a leopard ‘scrape’ by the edge of the trackway.
The animal makes two swipes toward itself through the dirt that come together into a ‘V’ shape.
It then daubs scent at the point of the V from anal glands. Anjali describes such scrapes as
‘calling cards.’ They mark territory so as to prevent confrontation among crowd-avoiding
leopards and provide intriguing information such as whether a female is in her estrus.
At sites two and three both, one camera is at first strapped on a little too high, so it must
be removed both times and re-fastened at the right level. At site three, one of the cameras
repeatedly refuses to fire. The scientists tinker for fifteen minutes before solving the problem. At
each site, Andrew and Anjali take turns on all fours, crawling leopard-like past the cameras to
make sure they are working properly. Anjali thinks Andrew does the better leopard crawl but
hers has its own je ne sais quoi. Zoology is fun.
On the morning I need to depart, Andrew and Anjali head into the park with Project
staffer Nimalka Sanjeewani for a ‘prey count.’ Leopards are supremely adaptable as carnivores,
so plenty of creatures number among their prey from time to time: you cannot meaningfully try
to count them all. Hence, the Project executes ‘transects’ of selected prey species along with
species of special interest: four kinds of deer (spotted, barking, sambhur and tiny, shy mouse
deer), along with porcupine, jackal, boar, land monitor, buffalo, sloth bear, grey langur, toque
macaque and elephant. (Leopard beware: many of these critters are dangerous, so try to avoid the
grown-ups.) There are three routes in each transect, each of them requiring a morning to
complete, each beginning at exactly the same time in the morning. Transects are performed
repeatedly over time so as to yield data that can be analyzed comparatively. Jeeps proceed at
painfully slow speed so as to avoid spooking the subjects and to facilitate accurate counts.
Scientists record prey numbers, ages, sex, distance from jeep and odometer reading from the start
point. Zoology is thrilling.
Scat analysis is a third critical Project activity. Scientists gather poop for close inspection
back in the lab. Leopards digest meat and excrete quickly, so prey fur comes through neatly in
droppings. Identifying fur and analyzing relative proportions illuminates leopard diet as it varies
from animal to animal, place to place and time to time. Scat also yields genetic information used
in mapping linkages among populations across the island. Zoology is glamorous.
Leopards live not just in protected areas but in diverse jungle habitats throughout the
island, including mountain, tropical rain, river valley and dry evergreen forests. They can
flourish in close proximity to humans, putting dogs and cattle at risk from time to time. Despite
this flexibility and wide distribution, the Lankan leopard now makes the ‘endangered’ list (likely
to go extinct) of the International Union for Conservation of Nature based on data provided by
Anjali and Andrew: ‘upgraded’ so to speak from its previous classification as merely
‘vulnerable.’ Always at risk on islands, an apex predator confronts compounded danger from a
fast-growing human population like Sri Lanka’s. Heavily hunted for sport in the past and
poached for skins, leopards now face mounting pressure from habitat encroachment, forest
fragmentation, ongoing poaching and human-leopard conflict killing. Conversion of uncultivated
land to paddy fields poses serious threat.
Having worked at Yala national park for many years, the Leopard Project currently
supplements its Willpattu surveys with research in the central highlands. Focus there is on
determining distribution and movement in fragmentary mosaics of tea estates, stream valleys and
quasi-isolated forest patches, some of them on ridgetops too high and steep for planting.
Gyanada and Nimalka have surveyed tea plantation workers on leopard encounters. With its
accumulating knowledge as to demography, ranges and behavior, the Project paves the way for
well-considered and integrated leopard conservation programs. At the moment, for example, it
seems possible that local populations are all in touch with neighboring populations through
movement pathways, but it also seems possible that some populations have been cut off. Should
we emphasize protecting current pathways or developing new ones?
Establishing ‘source and sink’ dynamics could also be a key takeaway. Source and sink
inquiry recognizes that some habitats are favorable while others are marginal. High birth rates in
favorable habitats sustain a dense population but some animals may regularly get pushed into
more marginal habitats where deaths outnumber births. In an island-wide system, could
Willpattu be a source and central highlands a sink? Could there be more localized source/sink
dynamics? (By the way, confirming source/sink relations would mean, despite the old saying,
that some leopards do in fact change their ‘spots.’) Understanding source/sink dynamics could
aid in wise design of conservation efforts within limited resources. Should we, for example,
stress protection of source habitat by building more water holes or focus instead on enhancing
sink habitat by helping tea estates deal with nuisance leopards non-lethally?
Lanka’s leopard will not long survive without strong, informed and thoughtful
conservation effort. Aside from her own craftiness and resilience, her best hope for now lies with
the Leopard Project.
You can be in touch with principals of the Leopard Project at
[email protected]. A graduate of Harvard Law School, Mark Hager lives in
Pelawatte with his family. Alongside inquiries on political economy and Sri Lankan wildlife, he
consults on complex legal and technical writing challenges. [email protected]
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