UPSC Civil Services Model Paper 8

Ministry of Environment released ‘ Status of Leopard in India, 2018 ’ report published on December 21.
A 60% rise in India’s leopard population has been recorded in 2018, compared to 2014 .
The national estimation of 12,852 leopards is 60% higher than the 2014 estimation of 7,910.
Of the 12,852 leopards, Madhya Pradesh tops the list with 3,421 leopards and is followed by Karnataka with 1,783 leopards Maharashtra with 1,690 .
But there is one area in the country, the northeastern landscape , where its population is facing a “major threat” due to land-use changes triggered by agriculture, tea gardens, and linear infrastructure projects .
According to the Indian government’s ‘Status of Leopard in India, 2018’ report published on December 21, the northeastern landscape has 141 leopards out of 12,852 estimated across the country while the Shivalik Hills and Gangetic Plains range has recorded 1,253 leopards, Central India and the Eastern Ghats range have 8,071 leopards and Western Ghats range has 3,386.
The report said leopards are distributed widely in the northeastern landscape from the high altitude of the eastern Himalayas to the forests adjacent to teagardens in the flood plains but due to sampling inadequacy.
The leopard population was estimated only from the camera trapped sites of northern West Bengal, Manas and Nameri tiger reserves of Assam, andthe southern valley of the Pakke Tiger Reserve of Arunachal Pradesh.
In fact, the actual number of leopards could be more than recorded in the report . “Few photographs were obtained from Kaziranga, and Namdapha tiger reserves but due to low detection and low sample size, the population was not estimated from these tiger reserves,” said the report.
Besides land use factors such as linear infrastructure projects , the report revealed that poaching and human-wildlife conflict are other major factors impacting the species in the northeastern landscape