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The leopard is the most widespread of all the big cats. The typical form came from Egypt. Its present range extends from sub-Saharan Africa across the Arabian Peninsula into the Indian subcontinent, including Sri Lanka and further eastwards to China, Korea, Peninsular Malaysia and Java. It was the Swedish Botanist, Carl Linnaeus who first gave the leopard its scientific name, Panthers pardus in 1758. Given the leopard’s wide geographical distribution, a number of subspecies have been described since then.
Deraniyagala (1949) recognized the Sri Lankan leopard as a separate subspecies, Panthera pardus kotiya on the basis that it differed from the mainland form, Panthera pardus fusca by its smaller size and longer tail. Fernando (1964) found no justification for such a distinction, yet recent DNA based genetic studies by Miththapala and others. (1991,1992) have confirmed the genetic distinctness and validity of the Sri Lankan subspecies.
Sri Lankan leopards are characterized by decreased genetic variation in comparison to those in India. They are believed to have been isolated on the island for about 10,000 years. The confirmation of the Sri Lankan leopard as a distinct subspecies is important, as it makes it all the more imperative that proper measures are adopted to conserve it, and its habitat. As this is the only large, spotted felid in Sri Lanka, it cannot be confused with any other wild animal.
The pelage colour is usually golden-tawny or rufous-brown covered with open rosette-like black spots, whose size varies with the age of the animal: the spots are usually larger and farther apart as the animals get older. No two leopards have the same pattern of spots. Older animals often have lighter skin. The rosettes in leopards lack the additional black spots inside, which distinguish them from the Jaguar Panthers onca.
Unlike the tiger Panthers tigris, leopards frequently produce a black or melanistic variety, known as “Black Panther” which is rare in Sri Lanka. They are caused by a recessive gene and are more numerous than the conventionally coloured form in the humid rainforests of Peninsular Malaysia. Melanistic leopards are rare in East Africa, perhaps due to the limited extent of forests. Leopards from arid areas tend to be paler than those from humid forests.
Both melanistic and normal coloured young appear in the same litter. Although albinos among leopards are known, they are extremely rare. In Sri Lanka, at the turn of the century, the leopard was very common especially in the forests of the low country. It ranged from sea level to an altitude of over 2,000 m in the Horton Plains. More recently, a combination of forest conversion and poaching has substantially reduced both the number and range of the leopard in Sri Lanka, and today viable populations occur only within protected areas.
The key conservation areas where leopard are still found in Sri Lanka are: Gal Oya National Park, 62,936 ha; Hakgala Strict Nature Reserve, 1,142ha; Horton Plains National Park, 3,160ha; Hurulu Forest Reserve 26,012ha; Lahugala-Kitulana National Park, 1,554ha; Maduru Oya National Park,58,850 ha; Minneriya National Park, 8,889ha; Peak Wilderness Sanctuary, 22,380ha; Ritigala Strict Nature Reserve, 1,528ha; Ruhunu National Park, 126,782ha; Sinharaja National Heritage Wilderness Area, 8,864ha; Somawathiya Chaitiya National Park, 37,762ha; Thirukonamadu Nature Reserve, 25,019ha; Ude Walawe National Park, 30,812ha; Victoria-Randenigala-Rantambe Sanctuary, 42,087ha; Wasgomuwa National Park, 37,063ha; and Wilpattu National Park 132,317ha. Thus, the leopard’s range includes a total of 624,484 ha, 78% of the island’s protected area.
Leopards of the low country in Sri Lanka are in general larger than those found in the hills. The leopard is an extremely adaptable predator. It is a great wanderer over a given area, and like other forest animals that live a nomadic life, must remain inconspicuous while it sleeps as well as while it hunts. In Sri Lanka leopards occupy a variety of habitats, that range from the dry, semi-arid thorn scrub in the lowlands to the dense montane cloud forest at altitudes of over 2,000m. The only habitat which the leopard is unable to cope with is outright desert.
Today, in Sri Lanka, as human settlements and farming encroach into what used to be wilderness areas, the leopard finds itself with its back against the wall, except in protected areas, and in the hills. This ability to survive in higher altitudes is an advantage for the leopard as the human imprint becomes conspicuous in the lowlands. However, it is essentially a forest animal: even those adapted to semi-arid conditions appear to have a physiological need for shade during the heat of the day. This explains why it is not often encountered in the wild at mid-day. In areas where the leopard has learned to fear man, it becomes much more cautious and nocturnal.
Unless accompanied by dependent young the leopard is generally solitary: 81% of the observations made by Eisenberg & Lockhart (1972) in Wilpattu National Park were of solitary animals, while pairs accounted for only 19%. When undisturbed, the leopard spends a considerable part of its daily activity on the ground, seeking refuge in trees at times. In Ruhunu National Park, it often uses the rocky outcrops of Kotigala and Jamburagala in Block I as vantage points. Much of the daytime is spent dozing, either in the dense scrub, or draped over a stout branch of a tree.
Leopards Crossing the Buttala Kataragama Road Milinda Wattegedera of the Yala Leopard Diary
Leopards have excellent night vision, and hunt relying very largely on sight. Although the leopard is often considered to be a nocturnal predator, this generalization may not be strictly valid across the range of the species. In areas where poaching is intense, the leopard is certainly more active at night and becomes highly secretive. It becomes more nocturnal only in areas where it feels insecure by day, as a result of human harassment or disturbance by other carnivores. But within many of the protected areas in Sri Lanka, the leopard appears to be the least nocturnal of all the worlds big cats.
The leopard is a more opportunistic predator than any other felid and will attempt to kill any prey it comes across. Despite its relatively small body size, the Sri Lankan leopard is capable of taking large prey, and is extremely adaptable to changes in prey availability. In general, female leopards with cubs are more successful in killing their prey than males. Larger prey is taken predominantly by the females when they are lactating.
Leopards sometimes carry their kill and rest it on a branch of tall tree in order to avoid the unwelcome attention of other predators such as jackals and crocodiles. In the Serengeti National Park in East Africa, leopards are known to climb trees with a 150 kg Grant’s gazelle clamped between their teeth. Leopards prefer prey in the 20-70kg size category, with an upper limit at about 150kg, two or three times the weight of the cat itself.
Females also use their slightly smaller home ranges more effectively in capturing prey. However, should the prey density become very low, they would range over a wider area, since the behaviour of female felids is usually more closely keyed to resources, given their responsibility of raising young. Both females and males spend a substantial part of their time locating and capturing prey, especially during the night.
The classic hunt consists of stalk, chase and kill. Stalking distances vary according to prey type, and as far as the male leopards are concerned, they increase as the prey size increases. In captivity, leopards are fed 1-1.2 kg of meat per day or 365-438 kg per year. On the assumption that on average 25% of a kill consists of inedible portions, Schaller (1972) suggests that a leopard may need 487-584 kg of meat per year to survive in the wild.
But according to Turnbull-Kemp (1967), a leopard can eat from between 8.1-17.6 kg of meat in a 12 hour period. This factor perhaps explains why the leopard is catholic in its food habits. Foraging effort per individual also varies seasonally, with prey being relatively easily captured during the dry season. Although the leopard’s principal prey in Sri Lanka is the Spotted deer Axis axis, several other herbivores may function as buffer prey items.
The leopard always kills its large quadruped prey by seizing it by the throat with its teeth and then grasping it firmly round the neck and shoulders with its strong forelegs, and commences feeding on the soft parts in the belly first. Unless disturbed, it will stay by its kill until all the edible portions have been consumed.
In a study of 183 leopards, Amerasinghe et al. (1990) found hair of 12 genera of mammals, highlighting the fact that the leopard is more diverse in its food preference than was presumed before. Their study shows that in addition to the spotted deer, other mammals such as the wild boar Sus scrofa, mouse deer Tragulus meminna, black-naped hare Lepus nigricollis and even water buffalo Bubalus bubalis are also eaten by the leopard.
It is especially interesting to note the capacity of the leopard in Sri Lanka to subsist at times on much smaller prey such as rodents, frogs, snakes, and birds, when its usual prey are scarce. According to Eisenberg & Lockhart (1972), buffalo calves are rarely taken because of the vigilance of the cows. Occasionally, the leopard may eat carrion. In one instance, two leopards were seen feeding on an elephant carcass in Ruhunu National Park. One of the more significant observations regarding the leopard’s diet is the almost complete absence of domestic livestock, even from areas close to human settlements.
CONSERVATION: Leopards are an integral part of the food chain, and an unobtrusive part of the ecosystem, valuable both for their ecological role and for their exquisite beauty. The greatest threat to any wild cat comes from the increasing use of poison in agricultural areas. Hoogerwerf (1970) considered the critical element in the decline of the Javan tiger to be poison, almost certainly the work of agricultural settlers, for whom the predator is an unwelcome visitor. As Myers (1976) points out, given its propensity for scavenging, the leopard is more susceptible to taking poisoned meat.
Leopards are also widely poached for their skins, even within protected areas. Poaching still continues to be a threat throughout the leopards’ range in Sri Lanka. A 100 years ago, Clark (1901) estimated the number of leopards in the island to be about 1,660. At the beginning of the twentieth century at least 50% of the land was forested. Since then forest cover has declined to less than 23% of the land area.
The leopard is seriously affected by deforestation and the consequent loss of habitat. Given the low overall population, the leopard may be among the most seriously endangered species of large mammal in Sri Lanka. Viable conservation areas that support the leopard in Sri Lanka, and the establishment of connecting corridors, must be of sufficient size to ensure that at least minimum populations exist within their boundaries.
The article by late Professor Charles Santiapillai is extracted from the publication “for the leopard’
FLYING TACKLES AND BANDSTAND BEATS
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Two points stand out in the International Monetary Fund’s (IMF) statement from last week about the current economic situation in Bangladesh. First, Bangladesh is “not in a crisis situation.” Second, any economic programme to address the current challenges to our economy will be the government’s programme. Specifically, the statement said, “It is the authority’s programme and our efforts will be focused on collaborating with them to design a programme which will support them in addressing their long-term structural issues.”
Bangladeshi economists have also pointed out we are not in a crisis but facing difficult external conditions that need firm handling so that they do not become one. With four to five months of foreign exchange reserves and low foreign debt, we have enough ammunition to address short-term needs, barring other big shocks. As announced by the Fund, the discussions on this programme will take place in October.
With these positive developments and government actions to lower imports, such as depreciating the currency and allowing banks to trade more freely, the dollar kerb market is calmer. As I write, the dollar has fallen there – i.e., the taka has regained value – by 10 percent over the last 10 days.At the same time, as the government knows, there is no room for complacency or errors made in haste. Instead, let us use the current challenge to strengthen our economy.
As a previous August 3 IMF statement puts it, the reality is that our economy faces “a sharp deterioration in external conditions.” The immediate issue is not foreign debt but rather the record-breaking trade deficit of USD 33 billion and the current account deficit of USD 19 billion – i.e., the deficit even after including the USD 22 billion of remittances receipts sent by heroic Bangladeshi workers abroad. To put things in perspective, last year’s current account deficit increased nearly five times over the FY 2021 deficit and is almost four times the average current account deficit of the past five years.
Current account deficits are fundamentally the result of spending more than our income or, what is the same, importing more goods and services than we export. So, managing the current account will mean that our imports will need to grow markedly less than our exports in the next few years.
The immediate driver behind the high external deficits has been the spike in energy, fertiliser, food, and edible oil import prices. But that is not all. Even without these import price increases the current account deficit of FY 2022 would have been significant – perhaps twice that of the previous year.
That is because long-pending unaddressed structural weaknesses have made the economy and exports less diversified and competitive. These problems include low revenues and inadequate public expenditures, made worse by weak management; a strained financial sector burdened by non-performing loans, weak governance and interest rate caps; weakness in infrastructure, energy and urban development planning – all of which lower our economy’s competitiveness.
More fundamentally, an insufficiently trained labour force and a burdensome investment climate constrain our economy, as evidenced by the minimal foreign direct investment inflows. These are not long-term but pressing matters. Because of these weaknesses, we excessively depend on foreign services and skilled expatriate workers. Thus, our gross external payments for these services have almost doubled over the past five years to approximately USD 14 billion.
One driver of our large deficit is that our real exchange rate appreciated by more than 70 percent over the past decade, which made imports cheaper and our exports more expensive. That needed a correction. The depreciation of the taka by about 10 percent over the past few months has been one response. However, signalling that the exchange rate may still be unsettled, the kerb rate premia – the difference between the interbank rate and the kerb rate – remains at about 14 percent.
Thus, we will need realistic thinking. Assuming that energy prices will steadily decline is not warranted, given that winter is coming to Europe and North America. Even if Iranian oil enters the global market, it will provide only one percent of demand. European countries are stocking up and contracting oil and LNG supplies to avoid the perils of an unheated cold winter. Facing these conditions and high inflation, European and American demand for our exports will likely be subdued, even with some switching to our cheaper garments products. A global food shortage and rising prices are also all but guaranteed. Together, these ingredients can lead to deeper and longer-term economic difficulties and even a crisis for globalised developing economies such as ours.
Further, economic events during times of uncertainty, such as now, can be sudden and unexpected, as we have already discovered. It becomes critical for governments to stay ahead of events by preparing a well-coordinated programme to stabilise the economy and be ready for contingencies.How should the government prepare such a coherent, well-coordinated programme? There needs to be three elements in it.First, as good civil servants will tell you, strong political leadership will be imperative. For speed and authority, it may be best to organise a small economic committee of ministers that has the confidence of the prime minister to prepare and implement such a programme.
They and their civil service team should prepare large parts of the economic stabilisation and recovery policy package in advance of the IMF’s visit, negotiate with them when they arrive, and steer it through Cabinet approval. That will enable better coordination and political support. Leaving this task alone with the Ministry of Finance and the Bangladesh Bank could slow things.
A historically good example of this comes from India during its foreign exchange crisis of 1991, when, with the support of the IMF, they prepared and implemented a path-breaking economic reforms package. Reputed Indian economists say that was the programme that generated 20 years of rapid economic growth. That reform programme was almost wholly Indian prepared by then Finance Minister Manmohan Singh with the partnership of Commerce Minister P Chidambaram, with technical inputs provided by then Finance Secretary Montek Ahluwalia and other civil servants. Certainly, the steadfast political support of PM Narasimha Rao made it possible. Other examples are Thailand’s Cabinet Committee for Economic Policy, Indonesia’s Industry and Economic Committee, and Malaysia’s Special Cabinet Committee to protect the Economy and Labour market against Covid-19.
Who should be the members of such a committee in Bangladesh? The ministers of finance, agriculture, commerce and planning perhaps, along with the participation of the Governor of the Bangladesh Bank. The Foreign Ministry can advise on fraught matters such as assuring Europe and the US if we import oil from Russia. Including the road transport and bridges minister can provide political heft.
Second, while the Finance Minister does not need to be the chair of such a committee, the secretariat of this committee has to be the Ministry of Finance, and it has to be staffed by the most experienced civil servants in finance and the other ministries. Finance, in particular, is a ministry where nothing can replace the experience of working there for years. Difficult policy decisions about revenues, expenditure, subsidies, exchange rates, interest rates, bank governance, food and energy prices, regulations and safety nets will be needed. Only civil servants with the experience and knowledge of their subject will have the confidence to lay down situations and options most starkly to their political superiors. If this link in the chain falls, the political masters will be uninformed and blindsided.
Third, outside experts and stakeholders need to be consulted not only for their advice, but also to communicate the objective situation and get their support. Bangladesh has several former governors, finance secretaries and other civil servants who have effectively dealt with the IMF and with difficult economic situations in the past. We also have competent economists, including some with first-hand experience working in crisis-prone countries. Bangladesh also has thoughtful stakeholders in the chambers of commerce and business associations who can offer valuable perspectives. Finally, major political figures should also be taken into confidence to at least attempt to get unity behind the recovery programme.
(Dr Ahmad Ahsan is the director of the Policy Research Institute (PRI) of Bangladesh and a former World Bank economist and Dhaka University faculty member. Views expressed in this article are the author’s own.)
You wait ages for the bus, and then three come along at once. Books are a bit like that, too, although in this case it’s only a pair of them, both tackling the question of what to do about all the ‘climate refugees’. (The UN’s International Organisation for Migration estimates that 1.5 billion people may be forced to move in the next thirty years alone.)
First up is Gaia Vince, a British environmental journalist who has interviewed a great many climate scientists. Her book is ‘Nomad Century: How Climate Migration Will Reshape Our World’, and she has certainly grasped the key political problem in a rapidly heating world: some people will be hurt a great deal more than others.
It’s mainly a question of distance from the equator. Countries in the tropics and the sub-tropics will be experiencing intolerable temperatures, accompanied by monster storms, droughts and floods, well before mid-century, while those in the temperate latitudes will suffer inconvenience and discomfort but far less actual damage.
In particular, they will still have an adequate food supply, while those nearer to the equator will be seeing their agriculture collapse. That’s what will start the refugees moving in their millions – and 70% of the world’s population lives in these vulnerable regions. The only places for them to go for safety is to the richer countries farther north or farther south.
The refugees will feel entitled to settle in those privileged countries, too, since the rich, industrialised countries are responsible for the great majority of the ‘greenhouse gas’ emissions (carbon dioxide, methane, etc.) that have caused the warming. It is astoundingly unfair that the culprits get off lightly while the innocent are ruined – and the innocent know it.
The mass movement of climate refugees from poor, hot countries to rich, temperate ones is the political dynamite that could destroy global cooperation on stopping the emissions and the warming. Everybody who has been paying attention knows that, but Gaia Vince has a suggestion for dealing with it.
What we need, she says, is “a planned and deliberate migration of the kind humanity has never before undertaken,” in which several billion refugees from the worst-hit regions are resettled in the richer, cooler parts of the world. After all, most of the latter countries have falling birth rates, and they’ll need someone to look after them when they’re old.
And then we have James Crawford’s new book, ‘The Edge of the Plain: How Borders Make and Break Our World’. He sees the same problem of mass migration, and offers an even more radical solution: the abolition of borders. Away with the fusty rules of the Westphalian system, in which each state has absolute sovereignty within fixed frontiers.
Crawford likes anything that undermines or dissolves those rigid borders, like the ‘nation’ of Sapmi that sort of unites the Lapps of Russia, Finland, Sweden and Norway, or the ‘climate mobility’ advocated by Simon Kofe, foreign minister of Tuvalu.
Kofe’s tiny island country will be the first to disappear as the sea level rises, but he wants its sovereignty to continue even though all its citizens must live elsewhere. The sovereignty of the countries that give homes to Tuvaluans and refugees from a hundred other countries would also survive, but shared with the many sovereignties of the new arrivals.
Vince and Crawford are sincere and intelligent people taking on a genuinely existential problem: how can we cooperate to make it through the climate crisis when the pain and the blame are so unequally shared?
Vince writes about having to “shed some of our tribal identities and embrace a pan-species identity”, but both authors must know that what they are proposing is unrealistic and unlikely. Bits of that transition are already stirring, but it’s hard to believe that it can supplant the traditional loyalties in the next thirty to fifty years, which is the relevant time-frame.
There’s also a hidden defeatism here. Both authors assume that the heating will be big and long-lasting enough to force the refugees to move. That’s effectively writing off a lot of the planet as a human abode at least for a long time, if not forever.
Vince is well aware of all the partial techno-fixes to the climate crisis that are being discussed or investigated. She does not dismiss ‘geoengineeering’ out of hand, but she doesn’t see its real potential either.
Holding the temperature down artificially, if it can be made to work safely, is a patch designed to win us time to get our emissions down without a disaster, not a permanent solution to the problem. But the biggest disaster it would forestall is the climate refugee crisis: if the heating stops not far from where it is now, the refugees never start to move.
What is the terrorism we are facing today?Is it anything like the JVP’s terrorism in 1971, and the next wave of the 1987-89 JVP insurrection, also known as the 1988-89 revolt?
There are many of us who can still recall the terror that took place against the Tamil community, and the rise of the LTTE insurrection in the 1980s. We are certainly haunted by the deadly and painful memories of the decades long civil war caused by the insurrection of the LTTE, seeking a separate state for the Tamil community, which began in 1983 and lasted for nearly three decades.
That was the long age of terror in Sri Lanka. That is what brought the Prevention of Terrorism Act as a legal move to fight terrorism in this country, certainly with areas of action that went far beyond the principles of democracy and human rights.
President Ranil Wickremesinghe is seeing a new wave of terrorism in this country. It is the Terror of Street Walk and Protests. Democracy seems to be the codeword of the new terrorism in the country. The search for democracy, through better and cleaner governance, and the search for the exit of Rajapaksa power from this country is the goal of the new terrorists in this country.
It is interesting to recall how Ranil W, who came to Parliament through a National List after a huge defeat in the polls, initially spoke of the Galle Face protesters, who were later known as The Aragala activists. He saw it as a peoples’ protest, and the need to give our ears to it. That was as an opposition MP. Later, as a non-public elected prime minister, he told a foreign correspondent that tourists had a good opportunity in Sri Lanka to visit the Galle Face protesters, and take pictures of Aragalaya protesters.
He also appointed his key UNP member to head a committee that would support and provide necessary facilities to the Galle Face protesters – the Aragala Karuvo. He sees no Aragala Karuvo today, they are all the people of terror – Thrusthavadeen
We are now faced with the new Ranil-Rajapaksa mindset. It is the discovery of terror in anything that democratic, civilian protesters may or would do. Don’t get into a group of four or five, carry even a white flag, and walk on the streets, shouting for a better democracy in Sri Lanka. A “better democracy” is a catchword for Ranil-Rajapaksa action today. It has every threat of the Police rounding you up, after a big, baton-waving and striking chase, and catching you all as terrorists. And, action will be taken against you under the Prevention of Terrorism ACT (PTA).
The people of Sri Lanka have been moving away from the memories of terrorism for more than two decades. They have been seeking a better democracy from elections that saw the defeat of Mahinda Rajapaksa – the catch-name for people’s democracy for many years, the election of Maithripala Sirisena & Ranil Wickremesinghe as the “Yahapalana” leaders, and later the return to Rajapaksadom, in the huge election of Gotabhaya Rajapaksa as president with his “Vistas of Prosperity and Splendour”.
What the Ranil-Rajapaksa regime should be thinking of today, when seeking terrorism in every street corner and even the mild protests by the people, is the need to move away from the Vistas of Prosperity and Splendour, and settle down to the Reality of Hardship and Failure. The Ranil-Rajapaksa mindset is not ready to accept the painful realities the people are facing today. They are in a dreamworld of political power, where democracy can be shattered in a world of crooked, misshapen and distorted power.
This is the search for the Rajapaksa Return, hopefully with Gotabaya too.
‘Ranil Rajapaksa’ is the mover and player of the Rajapaksa Return match in politics.
The Sri Lankan people and voters will certainly have to face this fight in the coming elections, whenever it takes place; if they remain committed to the goals of Galle Face and Aragalaya, with an even deeper commitment to Democracy.
Terrorism will be the catchword of the Ranil Rajapaksa activists in the search for power that will keep the Rajavasala Pavul Balaya in place, with a salute to Ranil. The continued push for Pavul Balaya by the Rajapaksas, can also lead to some bitter and strong political fighting, to bring real power to the people – through a wider Jana Aragalaya.
Sri Lanka awaits a long and tough fight to restore and strengthen Democracy. Let’s look to the fall and exit of the Rajavasala Players, and the Ranil Watchdog, in this Battle of the People.It will be the true rise of democracy and the deeper fall of terrorism, with its non-violent activities too.
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