Indian leopard
| Indian leopard | ||||||||||||
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Indian leopard in Nagarhole National Park , South India |
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| Scientific name | ||||||||||||
| Panthera pardus fusca | ||||||||||||
| ( Meyer , 1794) |
The Indian leopard ( Panthera pardus fusca ) is a subspecies of the leopard that is widespread on the Indian subcontinent .
In 2008 the IUCN classified leopards as Low Endangered and stated that they are likely to soon be eligible for Endangered status as their habitat becomes increasingly fragmented and smaller, as they are violently poached for the illegal trade in fur and body parts in Asia and after Conflict situations are persecuted and killed. Outside of protected areas, they are becoming increasingly rare. The population trend is decreasing.
features
In his first description of Felis fusca in 1794 , Meyer described a panther- like cat from Bengal who was three feet and two to three inches tall, with strong legs, five feet long with a long well-formed tail, a head the size of a panther , wide snout, short ears and small, grayish-yellow eyes, light gray eyeballs and a restless wild look; Colored black at first sight, but on closer examination dark brown with circular spots of a darker color, tinged with pale red underneath.
Skulls and tanned skins of leopards from the sphere of influence of British India formed the basis for scientific descriptions in the following 142 years. In 1939, Reginald Innes Pocock explained that the skulls of leopards from Kenya and British India in front of him show no typical differences in dimensions, and that the species Panthera pardus is characterized by an unusually large variety of individual differences in the color and pattern of fur even if they came from places close together. He only found differences in the texture of the skins: the six skins from Sikkim and Nepal are coarser, thicker, longer-haired with large rosettes; the two from Kashmir are darker in color than all the other hides that were available to him from India, Burma and Ceylon .
It was not until 1960 that live leopards from the subcontinent were described, captured in Xigazê and Sichuan and transferred to the Prague Zoo . The curator based her description primarily on the characteristics of the skins: basic color, back in the middle and sides of the body aurantiaco-flavus; In winter the skins are a bit darker and longer-haired; Rosette spots black; Belly white; Ring spots on the back 5–6 cm x ↓ in size, mostly closed; Ring spots on the sides of the body even larger, dissolving into rosettes; long faded ring spots on the neck; punctiform spots on the head; Tail thickly hairy; Tail tip black. Based on these characteristics, she clearly identified the two leopards as belonging to the subspecies Panthera pardus pernigra . Towards the end of the 1990s it was recognized that color variations in the fur were insufficient to adequately identify subspecies.
Distribution area and habitat
On the Indian subcontinent, the Indus in the west and the Himalayas in the north form topographical barriers for the spread of this subspecies. In the east, the lower reaches of the Brahmaputra and the Ganges Delta form a natural barrier to the range of the Indochinese leopard . Indian leopards are native to all of India , Nepal, Bhutan , Bangladesh, and parts of Pakistan . They live in tropical and arid deciduous forests, temperate areas and in coniferous forests up to an altitude of 2,500 m, where the habitat of snow leopards begins. However, they did not colonize the Sundarbans' mangrove forests .
Threats
Hunting for the illegal wildlife trade has the potential to cause maximum damage in the shortest possible time and is a serious threat to endangered and endangered species . In addition to poaching , the loss of habitat and fragmentation of previously cohesive populations, varying levels of conflict with humans in densely populated areas, and competition with other predators are all threats to the Indian leopard.
poaching
The illegal trade in poached fur and body parts between India, Nepal and China is a significant immediate threat to wild populations . The governments of these countries have failed to adequately enforce the law and for years there has been a lack of political will to invest in combating crimes against wildlife. There are well-organized gangs of professional poachers who move from place to place and set up camp in unprotected areas. Hides are roughly dried on the spot and then passed on to traders who send them to Indian tanneries for further processing . Buyers select hides from dealerships or tanneries and smuggle them into markets outside of India, mainly in China, via a complex network. Furs confiscated in Kathmandu confirm the city's role as a crucial stopover for illegal furs being smuggled from India into Tibet and China.
It is likely that only a small fraction of all illicit trade will be confiscated while most of the goods smuggled reach the end market as intended. Seizures revealed:
- in India: more than 2,841 poached leopards between 1994 and March 2009;
- in Nepal: 242 poached leopards between April 2003 and May 2008;
- in China and Tibet: more than 774 poached leopards between July 1999 and September 2005.
In May 2010, the independent Wildlife Protection Society of India estimated that at least 3,189 leopards have been killed in India since 1994. For each tiger skin, at least seven leopard skins are shifted.
Conflicts between humans and leopards
The expansion of agricultural areas and the encroachment of humans and their livestock into protected areas are the main factors behind the loss of habitat and the decline in natural prey of leopards. As a result, leopards are approaching settlements where they can find easy prey: dogs , pigs, and goats - farm animals that make up an important part of their diet in this environment. This leads to conflicts between humans and leopards, which have increased particularly in recent years. In order to ward off attacks on farm animals, leopards are shot, poisoned and trapped.
natural reserve
Panthera pardus is listed in Appendix I of the Washington Convention on Endangered Species . International trade and cross-border transfers of live specimens and body parts are prohibited without the approval of the relevant national authorities.
India and Nepal have signed the Washington Convention on the Protection of Species, but have not implemented the provisions of the agreement with regard to the protection status of Panthera pardus fusca in their national laws and implementing regulations since then. The fact that poaching and the illegal trade in fur and other body parts of leopards is a major problem in both countries is also due to the insufficient training of the staff of the authorities responsible for law enforcement.
Frederick Walter Champion was one of the first to advocate the protection of leopards in India after the First World War , sharply condemned the hunt for leopards and affirmed their important role in the ecosystem. Billy Arjan Singh has campaigned for their protection since the early 1970s .
Since 2003, a group of wildlife biologists in the Indian state of Maharashtra has been working to resolve conflicts between leopards and humans.
Taxonomic Stories
Meyer pointed out in his first description of the panther-like cat from Bengal that the animal must be a new species, but still assigned it to the genus Felis . Almost 70 years later, Brian Houghton Hodgson sent several skins from leopards from Sikkim and Nepal, including black ones, to the Natural History Museum in London . On the basis of these skins, John Edward Gray named the species Leopardus perniger , Hodgson, in 1863 .
In 1930 Reginald Innes Pocock received a skull from a Kashmiri leopard and classified the specimen in his description as a subspecies of Panthera pardus , which he named Panthera pardus millardi .
Between 1868 and 1912, some names with descriptions of the fur and skulls of Indian leopards were published, some of which were assigned to the genus Felis . In 1939, Pocock resolved the confusion about the variety of names by listing all of the other specimens described under the Taxa Felis and Panthera as Panthera pardus fusca in addition to Meyer's Felis fusca ; He quickly declared Hodgson's Leopardus perniger to be Panthera pardus pernigra and thus recognized all of them as subspecies of Panthera pardus . He referred to Fusca as the “southern race”, pernigra from Sikkim and Nepal and millardi from Kashmir. The British Ellerman and Morrison-Scott later based themselves on Pocock's classification.
This taxonomic concept did not last for six decades. With the development of genetic engineering in the 1990s, it became possible to conduct phylogenetic examinations using tissue samples. A total of 60 samples from African and Asian leopards were available to the researchers in the genetic engineering laboratory in Frederick, Maryland , including only three from wild-caught Indian leopards from the Nagarahole National Park . Nevertheless, based on their results, the researchers recommended that the subspecies fusca , pernigra and millardi , which are named on the Indian subcontinent, be combined to form the group fusca .
A few years later, 77 tissue samples from leopards were phylogenetically examined, nine of which came from Indians from a zoo in Gujarat and from Nagarahole . The researchers confirmed the recommendation of their colleagues to use the name fusca for all leopards on the Indian subcontinent.
Genetic Studies
Particular genetic characteristics of Panthera pardus fusca are pronounced polymorphism in allozymes and two unique haplotypes in the mitochondrial DNA . On the basis of their phylogeographic analyzes, the genetic researchers estimated that the Asian subspecies of Panthera pardus emigrated from Africa 170,000 to 300,000 years ago and migrated over the Afro-Arab land bridge to Central and East Asia - a migration that began with the spread of humans to Asia matches. Phylogenetic near Panthera pardus fusca and in Sri Lanka -based Panthera pardus kotiya let her suggest that leopards migrated from the Indian subcontinent on to Sri Lanka.
Genetic differences from other subspecies
Up until the 1990s, 27 subspecies of Panthera pardus were recognized on the basis of superficial characteristics , of which only nine are considered valid on the basis of genetic analyzes. DNA analyzes created a clearer picture of the system . The position of the Indian leopard within the species Panthera pardus is largely unclear, as different methods of phylogenetic systematics produce very different results. This could indicate that P. p. fusca split off from all other subspecies early on, i.e. it is basal.
Web links
- Species profile Indian leopard; IUCN / SSC Cat Specialist Group in English
- Leopards.:. wild-katze.org Anthology about research and conservation of leopards in Asia
- Panthera pardus inthe IUCN's 2008 Red List of Threatened Species .
- Project Waghoba - Leopard Conservation in Maharashtra, India
- Wildlife of Pakistan: Saving the Common Leopards in Pakistan
Individual evidence
- ↑ a b Henschel, P., Hunter, L., Breitenmoser, U., Purchase, N., Packer, C., Khorozyan, I., Bauer, H., Marker, L., Sogbohossou, E., Breitenmoser- Würsten, C. (2008) Panthera pardus In: IUCN Red List of Threatened Species. Version 2010.4.
- ^ A b F. AA Meyer: About de la Metherie's black panther. In: Zoological Annals. Volume I. Im Verlage des Industrie-Comptoirs, Weimar 1794, pp. 394–396.
- ^ A b R. I. Pocock: The Fauna of British India, including Ceylon and Burma. Mammalia. - Volume 1. Taylor and Francis, London 1939.
- ↑ LJ Dobroruka: The Hodgson's panther, Panthera pardus pernigra Hodgson 1863. In: The zoological garden. Volume 29 (2) (1964), pp. 61-67.
- ↑ a b K. Nowell, P. Jackson: Wild Cats: Status Survey and Conservation Action Plan. IUCN / SSC Cat Specialist Group, Gland, Switzerland 1996.
- ↑ a b c d S. Miththapala, J. Seidensticker, SJ O'Brien: Phylogeographic Subspecies Recognition in Leopards (P. pardus): Molecular Genetic Variation. (PDF; 674 kB) In: Conservation Biology. 10 (4) (1996), pp. 1115-1132.
- ↑ SH Prater: The book of Indian animals . Bombay Natural History Society, Bombay; Prince of Wales Museum of Western India, 1965.
- ^ A b c d e D. Banks, S. Lawson, B. Wright (eds.): Skinning the Cat: Crime and Politics of the Big Cat Skin Trade. (PDF; 5.3 MB) Environmental Investigation Agency, Wildlife Protection Society of India 2006.
- ^ D. Banks: The Tiger Skin Trail. ( Memento of the original from October 12, 2007 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. Environmental Investigation Agency 2004.
- ^ Wildlife Trust of India: Leopard skin traders arrested in UP; eight skins recovered. ( Memento of the original of July 21, 2011 in the web archive archive.today ) Info: The archive link was automatically inserted and not yet checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. Wildlife Trust of India - News, July 29, 2008.
- ^ A. Ghosh: 27 leopard skins seized in 45 days. Wildlife Protection Society of India, September 13, 2008.
- ↑ Leopard skin, other wildlife products seized; five hero. In: The Hindu News Update Service. September 25, 2008.
- ^ Wildlife Protection Society of India: Leopard Skins Seized in Dehradun. Wildlife Protection Society of India, March 18, 2009.
- ↑ Nepalnews.com (2005) Huge haul of tiger, leopard skin seized. ( Memento of the original from November 20, 2008 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. nepalnews.com, September 10, 2005.
- ↑ P. Yonzon: Conservation of Tigers in Nepal 2007. ( Memento of the original from July 27, 2011 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. Wildlife Conservation Nepal 2008.
- ^ Cross-border wildlife traders arrested in Nepal with WTI's help. ( Memento from March 13, 2012 in the Internet Archive )
- ^ Leopards Battling For Survival In India. Wildlife Protection Society of India, May 18, 2010.
- ^ S. Sears: Mumbai Leopards: Killers or Victims? ( Memento of the original from July 16, 2011 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. Wildlife Extra, April 11, 2008.
- ↑ S. Sears: The wild leopards of Oman and Nepal - And how to see them. ( Memento of the original from October 17, 2011 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. Wildlife Extra, April 2009.
- ^ Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora (1979) Text of the Convention. Article III: Regulation of Trade in Specimens of Species Included in Appendix I. Signed at Washington, DC, on March 3, 1973; Amended at Bonn, on June 22, 1979.
- ^ RS Aryal: CITES: Implementation in Nepal and India, Law, Policy and Practice. ( Page no longer available , search in web archives ) Info: The link was automatically marked as defective. Please check the link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. Bhrikuti Academic Publications, Kathmandu 2004, ISBN 99933-673-3-8 .
- ^ FW Champion: What is the Use of Leopards? (1934) In: The Jungle in Sunlight and Shadow. Natraj Publishers, New Delhi 1996.
- ↑ A. Singh: Prince of cats. Jonathan Cape, London 1982.
- ↑ V. Athreya: Conflict resolution and leopard (Panthera pardus) conservation in a human dominated landscape ( Memento of the original from January 18, 2012 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. (PDF; 361 kB). Cat Project of the Month - November 2006. IUCN / SSC Cat Specialist Group
- ^ JE Gray: Catalog of the specimens and drawings of mammals, birds, reptiles, and fishes of Nepal and Tibet, presented by BH Hodgson, Esq., To the British Museum. Second edition. London 1863: Printed by order of the Trustees. S. V and 3.
- ↑ RI Pocock: The panthers and ounces of Asia. Volume II. In: Journal of the Bombay Natural History Society. 34: 307-336 (1930).
- ^ JR Ellerman, Morrison-Scott, TCS: Checklist of Palaearctic and Indian mammals 1758 to 1946. Second edition. British Museum of Natural History, London 1966, pp. 316-317.
- ↑ a b O. Uphyrkina, WE Johnson, H. Quigley, D. Miquelle, L. Marker, M. Bush, SJ O'Brien: Phylogenetics, genome diversity and origin of modern leopard, Panthera pardus. In: Molecular Ecology. (2001) 10, pp. 2617-2633.
