‘Leopard Diaries – the Rosette in India’ review: The conservation of big cats

A wildlife biologist explains why the elusive leopard needs more natural reserves to survive

Early on in his book, wildlife biologist Sanjay Gubbi says leopards evoke both terror and admiration, but ‘have not mesmerized people throughout history like lions, tigers and cheetahs.’ This is a good way to understand the premise of this book. Gubbi unpacks leopards like he is studying disparate pieces of grit on a seashore. He scrutinises issues of various shapes and sizes that affect or drive leopards — politics, feline movement, chance events. He comes away with his hands full and feet deeply planted in the mud — squarely addressing just how messy big cat conservation can be. To understand how the human hand and ‘wild nature’ interact with each other, the leopard is an almost perfect case study. Leopards live both in recognisable areas like Mumbai’s Aarey and in inaccessible forests; and as livestock eaters, they become the centre of human-wildlife conflict. When people hate leopards, they often want revenge, not redressal; conserving a large obligate carnivore and its habitat can be much harder than say, conserving birds. As Gubbi points out, mosquitoes kill far more people than leopards, yet it is the leopards who become pin-ups for conflict.