Research Article: Basu, N., I. Siddiqui, P. B. Patil, and M. L. Allen. (2026). “Catwalk: Leopards Persist at Moderate Densities While Exhibiting Temporal Segregation From Humans in Telangana’s Boath Range.” Ecology and Evolution 16, no. 7: e73987.

Blog Author: Aditya Banerjee

Key highlights: 

• Thirty-seven camera traps run for roughly 42 days in a Reserved Forest outside Kawal Tiger Reserve, Telangana, yielded 1,243 trap nights, 51 independent leopard events at 13 sites, and six individually identified leopards at an even sex ratio.
• Leopards and people used the same forest at opposite times of day. Temporal overlap with humans was low for both males and female leopards, and overlap with livestock was similarly low.
• Leopard activity was crepuscular (most active during dawn and dusk), with a major peak near dusk and a second near dawn, and a pronounced lull through midday and early afternoon.
• Overlap with potential competitors such as sloth bear and grey wolf was higher than with people, and females overlapped with competitors more than males did.
• Leopard activity matched wild pigs most closely, suggesting a preference for accessible wild prey where it is available. However, detections of wild ungulates were low, pointing to a thin prey base that may cap how many leopards the forest can hold and raise the chances of livestock losses.
• The forest block links habitats in Maharashtra with the Kawal landscape, making it valuable for connectivity as well as for the leopards.

Much of what we know about large carnivores in India comes from protected areas. Reserved Forests, which carry lower levels of legal protection and are used daily by people and livestock, have been studied far less, even though they often serve as the corridors that hold populations together. A recent study set out to fill part of that gap by estimating leopard numbers and activity patterns in the Ajjar–Wajjar forest block of the Boath Range, in the Ichoda Forest Division of Adilabad district, Telangana. The landscape is a mosaic of dry deciduous forest, farmland, and settlements, and it lies on the route connecting protected areas in Maharashtra with the Kawal Tiger Reserve.

The team initially conducted reconnaissance surveys for pugmarks, scat, and other signs, and then surveyed about 90 km² and deployed 37 unbaited camera traps along trails, seasonal streams, dirt tracks, and forest roads. Forest Department beat staff took part in the data collection, which both improved coverage and built local monitoring capacity. Over roughly 42 days totalling 1,243 trap nights between December 2024 and January 2025, the cameras produced more than 83,000 photographs, of which a fraction captured wild animals. Individual leopards were identified from the rosette patterns on their coats, with two independent reviewers assigning identities and a third settling any disagreement.

To estimate leopard density, the researchers used spatially explicit capture–recapture models, an approach that places each animal's activity centre in the landscape and allows its detection to decline with distance away from it. As a single camera would be unable to photograph and match both left and right flanks to the same animal, the two sides were analysed separately. Both analyses pointed the same way: roughly six to nine leopards per 100 km², with confidence intervals that overlapped substantially. Set against published figures from Central India and from protected areas with comparable human pressures, this counts as a moderate density, and it is an encouraging result for a forest with no special protection, particularly since the statewide leopard estimate for Telangana declined between 2018 and 2022.

The second half of the study asked how leopards partition their day around humans and other animals. Using time-stamped photographs, the team compared temporal activity curves for leopards, people, livestock, prey, and competing carnivores, measuring how much each pair of curves shared. Leopards were most active around dusk and again near dawn, and least active through the middle of the day, precisely when human and livestock movement peaked. Overlap with people and with livestock was low for both sexes. Overlap was highest with wild pig, and moderate with nilgai, sloth bear, and grey wolf. Male and female leopards shared a little under two-thirds of their activity, with females appearing to step around the sharpest male peaks.

Read together, these results describe coexistence achieved through timing rather than distance. The leopards were not avoiding the forest that people use; they were using it on a different schedule. That flexibility is one reason leopards persist so widely outside protected areas, but it is not a guarantee. If human activity in these forests expands into the dawn and dusk hours, the separation that currently keeps encounters rare could narrow.

The prey picture gives a second reason for caution. Wild ungulates were detected infrequently and chital, an important prey species in Central Indian dry deciduous forests, were all but missing. A thin wild prey base limits how many leopards the forest can support and makes livestock a more likely alternative, which is how conflict begins. The authors note that camera placement aimed at carnivores may have under-recorded ungulates, and recommend methods such as camera trap distance sampling to measure prey more reliably.

For managers, the study offers a baseline rather than a verdict. It establishes what leopard numbers and activity look like in this forest block now, against which future change can be measured. It also argues for treating small, multi-use forest patches as conservation assets alongside large protected areas, and for planning that accounts for social carrying capacity as much as ecological carrying capacity. Where people and leopards share a forest, keeping their days apart may be one of the quieter ways coexistence is maintained.

To access the original article, click here

Keywords: Leopard; Panthera pardus; camera trap; spatially explicit capture-recapture; diel activity; temporal overlap; human-wildlife coexistence; Reserved Forest; corridor; Telangana; Central Indian Landscape