Why I want to save the leopard that killed my dog

I have a personal relationship with the leopard that prowls through our farm in Thiruvadisulam, rural Tamil Nadu, India. Eight years ago, he killed my pet German Shepherd, Karadi. As I came out of mourning, I became possessive of the leopard. He became the embodiment of Karadi’s spirit, and I called him Macavity. My husband and I first photographed the leopard on 17 January 2009 with a camera trap. Since then, we obtained flash colour photographs and grainy infrared-lit video of his comings and goings. Five years after the first photograph, the Forest Department’s camera trap snapped him in a neighbouring forest on 12 July 2014. Every leopard’s pattern of rosettes is as unique as fingerprints, leaving no doubt it was Macavity striding down the forest path. He was just as obese as he had been five years ago, and why not? He has plenty of stray dogs, free-ranging goats, and crop-fed monkeys to pick. In the adjoining forest, women cut firewood, groups of men clandestinely share a bottle of rum, and grandfathers graze goats. On weekends, children, some as young as ten, swarm over the rocks. Their high-pitched voices ring clear as a bell down the hill slope. Over the years, Macavity could have mistaken a young boy’s crouched form, obscured by bushes, for prey. Or he could have stalked women and men hiding from the harsh midday sun in the shade of low trees. But instead, he lay low when people entered his domain and kept his cool while hunting dogs along village alleys. Few people saw him and even fewer worried about him. But now the Forest Department is after him. Two months ago, a villager, Dakshinamurthy, returned home on a Friday evening in May to find one of his goats dead and five others missing. A terrified Dakshinamurthy and his distraught family sought shelter with another family. The Forest Department examined the area and found a leopard’s pugmarks imprinted on the soft sand. It set a trap cage with a live goat as bait for the predator in the nearby forest. Dakshinamurthy’s village, Irukundrapalli, is about six miles (10 km) from where I live, on the rural margins of Chengalpattu town, 40 miles south of Chennai city. I was certain this couldn’t be our plump Macavity. He couldn’t walk that distance, I scoffed. Leopards enjoy the highest protection under India's Wildlife Protection Act. The department has to prove human life is in danger to trap one, and the chief wildlife warden of the state has to formally issue permission to do so. Without such a directive given by the senior official, the trapping operation would be illegal. If a wild animal kills livestock, the department recompenses the affected family. Dakshinamurthy will receive Indian Rupees 2,000 (£20) a goat. A couple of days later, the Animal Welfare Board of India directed the department to stop using goats as bait. It argued that using live animals to lure the leopard contravened another law, the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals Act. Wildlife activists argued the predator wasn’t a man-eater and shouldn’t be caught. The department heeded the board’s directive, but it ignored the wildlife activists. Instead, it increased its efforts to capture the cat by setting eight trap cages baited with beef and mutton in the forest. When they catch the animal, officials said they planned to relocate the leopard elsewhere. Relocation is a common wildlife management strategy for dealing with any animals viewed as nuisance, be they snakes or tigers. Vidya Athreya, a wildlife biologist studying leopards in farmlands near Pune, Maharashtra, says the strategy causes more problems than it fixes. In the sugarcane fields of Junnar, an average of four humans were attacked a year. Post-relocation, attacks rose to an annual average of 17, and several of whom died. Vidya found trapping leopards from the sugarcane areas and releasing them in forests had made the problem worse. A similar strategy was followed in Sanjay Gandhi National Park, Mumbai. In the early 2000s, media reports of leopards mauling and killing people were as frequent as Bollywood celebrity gossip. Today, forest officials in Junnar and Mumbai practice minimal trapping, work with communities to address their fears, and encourage them to live with leopards. However, in Tamil Nadu, research conclusions, law, and experiences of other states have not made a difference. On 14 June 2014, a forest watcher saw a leopard stalking deer in Vandalur reserve forest at night, about 30 miles north of Chengalpattu town. Immediately, the Forest Department set two cages to catch the culprit. Apparently, the wild predator committed a crime by hunting wild prey in a wild habitat. Although I knew the department had no business capturing these leopards, I did not say a word, for fear that might attract attention to Macavity. Was I willing to live with condemning another leopard somewhere else to an uncertain future just to safeguard my own? I’ll confess the answer vacillated from yes to no. In the meantime, rattled villagers of Irukundrapalli calmed down, confident the leopard that had killed the goat had left the area for Vandalur’s wilderness. But reports of leopards started popping up from other places within a 30-mile radius of Chengalpattu. Traps were set in these locations. Even though I didn’t think any of this related to Macavity, I read the news with increasing trepidation. Would our peaceful rural countryside become the nightmare that was Junnar? According to the Forest Department, our village Thiruvadisulam is the natural habitat of leopards. With nothing to show for their two-month-long effort, the department moved the traps closer, to within a mile down the road from us. The officials knew about Macavity as I had written about him. I had unwittingly drawn him into the dragnet. When the camera trap photograph of the leopard appeared in the newspaper, I knew our cat was marked. I compared the department’s image with ours. There was no doubt it was him. I pleaded with the forest ranger. “This leopard has lived here for a long time without hurting anybody. He’s got a good temperament. If you catch and take him away, who knows what kind of animal will move in?” He listened and made sympathetic noises on the phone, but the cages remain. While I worry for our Macavity, I’m also confident. Karadi’s killer has avoided traps adroitly for these past few weeks just like his namesake in T.S. Eliot’s poem. If the cat doesn’t fall for the curiosity trick, he’ll continue to prowl through our farm and trigger our cameras in the future. And I hope every other leopard in the vicinity also roams free.