Overview
- The state’s forest records, released Friday through a Right to Information request, showed 149 leopard deaths over 14 months starting January 2025, with 46 killed by vehicles including 19 on highways.
- Other causes in the data included natural deaths at 24 percent, fights with other leopards at 21 percent, poaching or retaliation at about 14 percent, eight electrocutions, two snare kills, and roughly 9 percent unascertained.
- Senior officials said they have a roadmap to cut deaths through wildlife passages on new roads, warning signs, more patrolling, and by discouraging water points near roads, while noting the losses equal about 4 percent of the state’s estimated 3,907 leopards.
- Wildlife activist Ajay Dube, who sought the data, said the toll reflects weak enforcement of National Tiger Conservation Authority safeguards and unsafe corridors, and he called for accountability for road projects and electrocution deaths.
- Hotspots named in the reports include Seoni and Umaria, where highways slice through forest corridors near places like the Pench landscape, with other clusters near Satpura, Ratapani, and Indore’s farm edges where some farmers string live wires to deter wild boar.