Wildbuzz: Spotted! The ghosts of Siswan

Those who know the Siswan leopards well reckon the big cat as a ghost, neither here, nor there, but virtually everywhere and out of sight. The Siswan dam and community wildlife reserve straddles the highway to Baddi. Here in the dense, thorny hillock jungles criss-crossed by rivulets, leopards have left pugmarks within a 100 yards of the highway. Fortunately, an instance of a big cat killed by traffic has not come to notice yet. The ghosts do have a road sense!

Pugmarks would be seen regularly along with a few, fleeting glimpses of leopards secured by villagers, fishermen and jungle folk. It was in 2017 that concrete evidence was furnished by researchers from the Wildlife Institute of India, Dehradun. They set up 35 camera traps, which threw up images of at least three different leopards in the Siswan-Mirzapur belt. Thousands of images secured by traps showed an abundant prey base for leopards. The evidence underlined the big cats’ tolerant ways. There were images of leopards walking down well-used Siswan trails and just a few minutes later the same camera trap captured locals footing the same way, oblivious to the leopard’s civilised passage.

In recent years, a self-funded initiative by two young naturalists has enriched our understanding of Siswan leopards. Himmat Singh Guram and his sister, Naina, reside with their family at Baans Bagh farm in the dam’s neighbourhood. Himmat returned to the farm after stints as a wildlife ranger with resorts in Ranthambore and Jawai hills, Rajasthan. Naina left her assignment with the Mexican Embassy, Delhi, to return to her moorings. The siblings explored the Siswan biodiversity during the lockdown years. They stumbled upon pugmarks around their farm that is surrounded by bamboo and teems with boars, junglefowl, sambars, civets, owls etc.

The leopards seemed to always win the hide-and-seek game they played with the siblings. “We set up five Cuddeback camera traps at different points on leopard trails. For years, we did not capture a leopard in our traps though they were all around us. Then, a young male killed a sambar on our farm. Naina and I placed two camera traps at night. Nine minutes after we left the spot having set the traps, the leopard was on the kill and we finally captured one on camera. It was very close, he must have been watching us while we were setting up cameras,” Himmat told this writer.

Where the leopard had killed was virtually at the Gurams’ doorstep. An event to celebrate the marriage of Himmat’s other sister, Noor, was staged in later weeks at the farm. The celebration was held right next to where the leopard had been photographed! A few months later, the Siswan siblings recorded another male. This time they did not get the leopard fully. His face had just passed when the camera clicked at the infrared sensor’s command. But what was left in the ghost’s passage was a beautiful photograph: of black rosettes set in gleaming gold, very real and blooming in a starry Siswan night.

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