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THE FOREST Department along with Wildlife SOS and Wildlife Conservation Society (WCS-India) have begun to put radio collars on leopards in Mumbai. ‘Kranti’ became the third leopard to be fitted with a radio collar at the Sanjay Gandhi National Park (SGNP) under the two-year project.
The project aims to study leopards and help mitigate human-leopard conflicts in the heavily-populated urban landscape of Mumbai.
In a bid to mitigate human-leopard conflicts and improve efforts of leopard conservation, the Maharashtra Forest Department permitted radio-collaring of five leopards to study their movements, dispersal, home range size, habitat.
This data would help build effective strategies to mitigate conflict in the high-density Mumbai area.
A statement released on Friday by the Wildlife SOS said that in this phase of the project, the radio-collaring was done by the Forest Department in collaboration with Wildlife SOS and WCS-India.
SGNP is a 100 sq km urban forest reserve and home to over 40 resident leopards, making it a high leopard-density area. Residents living in proximity to the national park have had close encounters with these elusive big cats.
G Mallikarjuna, Conservator of Forest and Director, SGNP, said, “We’re expecting good data on human-leopard interaction through these collared animals. Two more leopards will be radio-collared in the coming days.”
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