The Dhole Cuon alpinus used to be the meso carnivore of the forests throughout Indian subcontinent; however, habitat loss, low prey biomass, and human disturbance exterminated the species from India’s 60% historic range, and the numbers are less than 1,500 individuals in wild.  Following the same shrinking trend, Dholes were extirpated from Gujarat.  A few doubtful sightings and inevident reportings generated ambiguity of Dhole presence in Gujarat.  We conducted a study in Vansda National Park with 15,660 trap nights at 30 trap locations, and have confirmed the rediscovery of Dholes in Gujarat after 70 years.  We estimated the Dhole’s minimum home range as 13.7km2 and also analyzed relative abundance index of other mammals.  The future retention of Dholes requires detailed range, diet, and adaption studies along with conservational efforts to reduce re-extinction probabilities.

Human-wildlife conflict is of growing concern because it threatens the survival of many wildlife species. This is especially true in case of large felids, most of which are threatened primarily due to anthropogenic causes, with conflict accounting for the highest mortality. Due to the increase in number of leopard and reduction of land area, the human-leopard conflict has increased, though the direct human interference with leopard is not seen but indirect use of the land and reduction of the natural prey to leopard and decreased prey base drastically have increased the indirect conflict with humans in many forms and the major one is the livestock depredation. In this study, we attempt to elucidate the ecological and social factors that drive such conflict in agricultural landscape in Vansda taluka of South Gujarat. We report an average 21.8 incidents of livestock depredation a year by the leopard. The depredation of Goats 43.12%, poultry 27.06 and Cow 19.72% formed the frequently attacked livestock and amongst the regions, the highest number of attacks (n=62) were in North zone followed by the Central zone (n=26) of Vansda taluka. Leopard's highest attack on livestock near sugarcane field was recorded during early morning (49.59%) followed by late evening (28.46%). The study revealed that a total of 50.46% attacks were in the evening, 80.20% infants of livestock were attacked and 75.63% attacks were when livestock is tied in the shed. The useful recommendations were concluded out of the study for forest department, local NGOs and farmers/villagers of the study area.

No abstract