Feral Dogs Menace In Ladakh – Free PDF Download

In Ladakh, the snow leopard has a new foe — feral dogs

• Tourism and the garbage it brings has allowed feral dogs to multiply rapidly in Ladakh, where they now threaten wildlife
• Some 12,000 ft. up a mountain in Ladakh, its coat camouflaged almost perfectly against an edifice of burnished rocks, a lone snow leopard found itself up against a pack of unlikely contenders — feral dogs.

Snow leopard

• The snow leopard (Panthera uncia), also known as the ounce, is a large cat native to the mountain ranges of Central and South Asia. It is listed as Vulnerable on the IUCN Red List because the global population is estimated to number less than 10,000 mature individuals and decline about 10% until 2040.

Feral Dogs

• The term “feral” can be used to describe those animals that have been through the process of domestication but have returned to a wild state. Domesticated and socialized (tamed) do not mean the same things. It is possible for a domestic form of an animal to be feral and not tame, as it is for a wild form of animal to be socialized to live with humans.

Observati ons

• The dogs were many, nearly half a dozen, they were furiously barking at the cat, clearly combative. • Feral dogs chasing or attacking a wild animal in Ladakh
• For snow leopards, the biggest threats are no longer hunting and retaliatory killing, it is the feral dog

Reason

• Dogs are thriving and multiplying in this rough, rugged terrain where temperatures plummet to -20° Celsius.
• But over the decade, unregulated tourism and massive waste generation — more than the region can cope with — has contributed to the explosion in feral dog population, he says. Triggering fear
• Free-ranging dogs were responsible for far more livestock kills than snow leopards or wolves.
• Packs of dogs have attacked or killed as many as 80 species of wildlife, half of these in protected areas.
• Fear-mediated behavioural changes’ in wildlife.

Way Forward

• Ladakh has an advantage in its seasonal bottlenecks. The winter is harsh, there is no tourism or garbage generation. So essentially, we need to curb access to garbage in summer
• Wildlife departments should be authorised to remove dogs from the habitats by suitable means.
• Restricting the entry of free-ranging dogs into wildlife sanctuaries and national parks and removal of unowned stray and semi-feral dogs.

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