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

andrewandanjali@gmail.com. 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. mark.hager@gmail.com