The Picture’s Fading Away


Where I am working now, is the heartland of the big cat, the leopard.
I do research while leopards hang out in the surrounding jungle, oblivious of our existence.
I the middle of Manesar, in Haryana, just where I am located now, lies the edge of the Aravalli range, the home to famous Indian dacoits and the Indian leopard. It is one of the few natural habitats of the big cat left in the country, and that itself seems to be a greater matter of concern than a thing of pride.
A couple of years ago, leopards had been spotted in Teekli village off SH-13, and it wasn’t one leopard or one family of the cat, but at least five to six families of leopards spotted at different times near and about that village.
The sad but obvious story surrounding any wild animal is the continuous shrinking of their habitat and a continuous encroachment by the multiplying human population. The same story holds true for the leopards of Manesar, Haryana.
Leopards here in their natural, unprotected environment have endangered their existence and sacrificed their future in the hands of unscrupulous and ignorant villagers. Ruthless poachers and mindless murderers kill them for fun and revenge. In 2008, a leopard was found dead on NH-8, the highway connecting New Delhi to Gurgaon and Jaipur. Then very recently, an Indian poacher was caught red-handed with leopard skin.
The story grows like this, but it never grows in favor of the beautiful beast. What needs to be done, that is the question?
I say, “Don’t sit and ponder, don’t yawn, don’t just have dreams in your sleep. Wake up to the reality. Do something meaningful and relevant. The leopard is just a passenger in the larger chariot of extinction that is moving towards endless dark. We have to stop it, and now, or soon we will find ourselves heading that way too.”

Dwaipayan Adhya

Comments

  1. AnkhagrassMay 30, 2010 at 3:44 PM

    we at manesar kill every thing which is not human..if it survives..it becomes "differently abled"!
    remember the monkey which is loosing its limbs in installments??

    ReplyDelete

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