The elusive Leopard is King of Yala
By Ruwan Rajapakse
The Sri Lankan Leopard (Panthera pardus kotiya) is the star attraction at Yala National Park in Southeastern Sri Lanka. It’s also the second hardest species to spot, next to the Sloth Bear (Melursus ursinus). When the Zeylanica team visited Yala back in December 2004, I got the rare opportunity to witness a large, healthy Leopard on a branch, being mobbed by a troupe of Gray Langurs (genus Semnopithecus). The beast was utterly indifferent to the assault by the monkeys, and kept swishing its tail lazily from time to time. In those days I had a Sony DSC-F828 snapshot camera with a rather limited 7X zoom, and matters were complicated by the arrival of a host of other safari jeeps. Everyone panicked, some folks climbing onto the roofs of the vehicles in a desperate attempt to get a clear photograph. The branches were in my way, and I missed the shot. The animal went away.
Four years later in December 2008, I was much better prepared. I had a 16X Nikon Coolpix P-80 and Nilu came armed with a Canon 40D SLR. The weather had been kinder too, this time around, with record rainfall in the preceding months. Lush green vegetation and herds of Spotted Deer (Axis axis ceylonensis) were abundant. After a successful round of photography we headed back towards the park gate at dusk, with the light fading fast. The time was around 5.30 PM. Earlier in the day we had seen many interesting species like the Sri Lankan Elephant (Elephas maximus maximus), the Estuarine Crocodile (Crocodylus porosus), the Golden Jackal (Canis aureus) and a dozen species of birds including formidable raptors like the Changeable Hawk-eagle (Nisaetus cirrhatus). We were satisfied in our adventures, but with perhaps a lingering feeling of sadness that we missed the Leopard and the Bear. The all of a sudden, there it was… a lovely specimen lazily lounging on a rocky plane! Out came our cameras, and here he is (we named him Frisbee):
Frisbee the Leopard, Yala National Park
We learned subsequently that due to the abundance of its main pray the spotted deer, the leopard is a rather common sighting these days. To give the readers an idea of what its staple diet looks like, here is a photo of a spotted deer taken earlier on that very day (incidentally, it was running away from two jackals who were hounding it):
The security arrangements at the Park are much improved; with Army detachments located inside the Park gates, and regular foot patrols. We got a sense that normalcy would return to Yala very soon, and one would be able to camp overnight near the designated park bungalows like in the good old days.
Spotted Deer in full sprint, Yala National Park, December 2008.
Getting back to the Sri Lankan Leopard, it deserves close study. Wikipedia says its diet includes sambar, barking deer, wild boar, monkeys and, most interestingly, fully grown buffalos. As a child I have heard a firsthand story from my nanny of how her dad shot a leopard who had entered his farm in Embilipitiya and was about to arrack his cattle (the buffalo was used extensively by paddy farmers as a beast of burden, before the days of mechanized farming). And, my own dad had a Leopard skin with five bullet holes strung up in his study in Colombo; this unfortunate animal was shot back in the 1950s in Hingurakgoda. Thankfully, the days of leopard hunting are long over; or at least so we are told.
What is the present Leopard population in Sri Lanka? Do they proliferate in cycles, dying out of starvation during drought years as pray disappears? What is their natural lifespan? Are they still found outside Yala and Wilpattu national parks, as some eyewitness accounts that are undocumented by photographic evidence suggest? These and many other scientific questions remain unanswered, but the elusive Leopard remains the King of Yala.
