Leopards Shift to New Prey in Indian City

The leopards come at dusk, leaping into buses, creeping into orphanages, and dragging men, women and children from bungalows and shanties that have mushroomed at the edges of an unlikely wedge of green surrounded by one of the world’s most populous cities.

After years of relatively peaceful coexistence, big cats and humans are at war on the edges of this metropolis. Ten people were killed in June, and four leopards tranquilized and confined to metal cages.

The killing spree appears to be caused by the same factor that has led to increasing encounters with big cats in California and elsewhere across the American West: the expansion of suburbs into tracts of wild land. More humans bring more potential food in the form of trash and, especially in India, stray dogs. The leopards hunt where the food is.

“Whether it’s Tokyo or London or [Bombay], we keep encroaching into the countryside,” said Sunjay Morga, a naturalist who has written a book on the leopards’ habitat, the 40-square-mile Sanjay Gandhi National Park at the edge of Bombay. “Nature always retaliates whenever it gets a chance.”

For decades, scattered homes and apartment buildings have hugged the edges of the park, a stretch of jungly hills that have been preserved at the northern edge of the island where Bombay is located. But longtime residents say their once-bucolic region has been transformed in the last few years.

Now the roads to the national park are dotted with billboards that would not look out of place in the Inland Empire, touting developments with names such as Glendale that boast “10 acres of landscaped gardens.” The new buildings charge a premium for their proximity to the park.

Accompanying the luxury high-rises and middle-class subdivisions is one of India’s signature forms of development: massive shantytowns that are built illegally, albeit with the covert blessing of powerful political parties. Shanties have even sprouted within the park boundaries, where a few thousand members of local tribes have always lived.

Leopard attacks were a yearly phenomenon in the region and have been steadily mounting. Last year, 16 people were killed compared with 14 killed in the first half of this year. This year’s rash of killings has been especially intense. The victims include a 3-year-old girl playing outside her modest house, poverty-stricken people dragged from their doorless shanties and professionals mauled while exercising in nature.

Naturalists are at a loss to explain the cats’ newfound aggressiveness. Until the last two years, they say, the cats would only rarely attack humans, usually targeting the tribal residents inside the park.

Bombay is abuzz with ideas for reining in the cats, from fencing in the park to deporting the leopards to other areas of India. Political parties have led impassioned delegations to park headquarters, demanding action. On Tuesday, a horde of reporters and camera crews went to the park’s interior to record the release of pigs and rabbits, which theoretically will serve as an alternative food source.

There has been little discussion, however, of limiting development. Bombay is one of the largest and fastest-growing metropolises in the world, with an estimated 16 million people. Land prices have soared in the city center, and concrete is radiating outward to seemingly every available patch of land.

“We are a totally undisciplined society,” said A.R. Parathi, the divisional forest officer in the park. “When you try to plan out your development you must take into account the other inhabitants.... You want your building to be next to the national park, but you don’t want the leopards there.”

The attacks have shaken residents near the park, but plenty of people keep coming.

Priya Mhatre, a 30-year-old bank clerk, was fed up with life in noisy, concrete-lined central Bombay. Last year she transferred to a branch in the Mulund area, just below the hills of the park, and moved into a high-rise apartment.

“It’s a much sought-after place to live in, even now,” Mhatre said. “The mountains, the ambience.” She said she was not too worried about the cats. “As long as I don’t go into their area, I figure they won’t come into mine.”

But the leopards have not been respecting human boundaries.

More agile than mountain lions, leopards often pounce on their prey from their perch in trees. Last year, a leopard leapt into a city bus on a road near the park, emptying it of passengers. Recently, a big cat crept into an orphanage in the suburb of Thane. It ate the German shepherd that the facility kept as a pet rather than going after any of the cowering children.

Guards at the new St. Forest development across the road from the park’s eastern boundary report that the cats creep in at dusk and crouch on the roofs of the single-story homes, looking for food.

Kuldip Singh went for a dawn stroll on the hill just above Mulund every day for 25 years. Singh was a veteran of hikes throughout southern India and would often trek barefoot so as not to injure any other living creatures, friends and family say. He had survived snake bites and scorpion stings and had encountered leopards before with no problems.

“He used to love them,” said Suriender Katyal, an occasional hiking companion.

The leopard Singh encountered June 9, however, was not so benign. It killed the 60-year-old lawyer near the peak of Singh’s favorite hill.

Singh’s friends are struggling to decide what to do next. They moved to the Mulund area decades ago to be near nature but now feel crowded out by both man and beast.

Harjinder Singh, a fellow hiker and no relation, said the leopard attacks had stopped the walkers in their tracks. Still, he and his friends hear the call of the wild.

“You don’t find peace in these concrete buildings,” he said, gesturing to a high-rise under construction. “You find peace in nature.”

Many have little choice in living near the leopards.

Chandram Upadhaya lives in a tiny, tin-roofed shantytown shack. She and her four children live in fear during the day and bolt the doors as the sun goes down. But she expects to stay put. The only family income is from one of her sons, who drives a cab, and the family owns the shack.

“Where can we go?” asked Upadhaya, who says she is about 60. “We have to stay here. Even if the leopards eat us all, we have to stay here.

“Even those people whose kids have been snatched by the leopards, they will stay here,” she added.

Looming behind Upadhaya’s hovel was the skeleton of a new apartment building under construction. A nearby billboard proclaimed: “Own a 5-star hotel room for life.”