{"id":4169,"date":"2024-03-19T11:28:10","date_gmt":"2024-03-19T11:28:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/news.talkwithrattan.com\/index.php\/2024\/03\/19\/sri-lankas-leopards-are-under-threat-but-this-woman-is-determined-to-save-them-cnn\/"},"modified":"2024-03-19T11:28:10","modified_gmt":"2024-03-19T11:28:10","slug":"sri-lankas-leopards-are-under-threat-but-this-woman-is-determined-to-save-them-cnn","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/news.talkwithrattan.com\/index.php\/2024\/03\/19\/sri-lankas-leopards-are-under-threat-but-this-woman-is-determined-to-save-them-cnn\/","title":{"rendered":"Sri Lanka\u2019s leopards are under threat, but this woman is determined to save them | CNN"},"content":{"rendered":"
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\n Having endured a bloody civil war from 1983 until 2009, Sri Lanka is now at peace and developing rapidly. That\u2019s good news for the country as a whole, but the island nation\u2019s leopards are under threat.\n <\/p>\n

\n Sri Lankan conservationist Anjali Watson says that as forests where leopards live are cleared to plant crops and build homes, the big cats are being squeezed into pockets of wilderness that don\u2019t connect with each other.\n <\/p>\n

\n \u201cWe\u2019ve lost a lot of leopards,\u201d says Watson. Nobody knows how many prowled the land before the war, but about 70% of the animals\u2019 habitat has been destroyed, and only 750 to 1,000 adult leopards remain, she says.\n <\/p>\n

\n Find out more about Call to Earth and the extraordinary people working for a more sustainable future<\/strong><\/a>\n <\/p>\n

\n What\u2019s more, leopards are at risk of getting caught in snares. The wire traps are usually set for bushmeat species, including wild boar and deer, but they are indiscriminate in what they catch.\n <\/p>\n

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\n As Sri Lanka\u2019s top predator, and its only big cat, the leopard \u201cplays a key role\u201d in Sri Lanka\u2019s ecosystem, says Watson. \u201cWe call it an umbrella species,\u201d she says, because taking steps to save leopards protects all the other species that share their forest home.\n <\/p>\n

\n Watson grew up in the city of Colombo, but \u201cI loved being out in wild spaces \u2026 I have a strong affinity with animals\u201d she says.\n <\/p>\n

\n (Video courtesy of Chitral Jayatilake)<\/em>\n <\/p>\n

\n In 1994 she moved to Ontario, Canada, to study at McMaster University, and met her future husband, Andrew Kittle.\n <\/p>\n

\n A few years later the couple, who share a passion for wildlife, had settled in Sri Lanka. In 2000 they launched a pilot project to study leopards in Yala National Park in the island\u2019s southeast. At the time, very little was known about the elusive animals, says Watson. To protect them, it was vital to understand their lives \u2013 and to count them.\n <\/p>\n

\n Watson and Kittle, who went on to establish the Wilderness & Wildlife Conservation Trust<\/a> (WWCT) in 2004, currently work in four locations around Sri Lanka. They are investigating the size of the leopard population using remote cameras that take photos when they detect movement. Leopards that are caught on camera can be identified because each one has a unique pattern of spots \u2013 and famously, their spots never change.\n <\/p>\n

\n Read: Google-backed project is collecting millions of wildlife camera-trap images<\/strong><\/a>\n <\/p>\n

\n Installing the cameras is often grueling work, says Watson. It can involve long drives on spine-rattling, rocky tracks, clambering up hillsides, bushwhacking through jungle, and occasional encounters with elephants, bears and snakes, as well as leeches and ticks.\n <\/p>\n

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\n Out in the field, the team collects leopard scat to find out which animals they are hunting \u2013 leopards are not picky eaters and their diet includes deer, monkeys, wild boar, porcupines and hares.\n <\/p>\n

\n Watson hopes that WWCT\u2019s data will help to shape development plans that make space for leopards. If corridors between forest patches and buffer zones around protected areas are safeguarded, both humans and animals could thrive. Watson is dedicated to ensuring that these \u201cbeautiful, fabulous creatures\u201d survive.\n <\/p>\n<\/p><\/div>\n

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CNN \u00a0\u2014\u00a0 Having endured a bloody civil war from 1983 until 2009, Sri Lanka is now at peace and developing rapidly. That\u2019s good news for the country as a whole, but the island nation\u2019s leopards are under threat. Sri Lankan conservationist Anjali Watson says that as forests where leopards live are cleared to plant crops […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":4170,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"tdm_status":"","tdm_grid_status":"","fifu_image_url":"https:\/\/media.cnn.com\/api\/v1\/images\/stellar\/prod\/191024133814-anjali-chandraraj-watson.jpg?q=w_1110,c_fill","fifu_image_alt":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[1225,233,1228,7247,3382,7246,1119,4196,1938,4280,2888,2486],"amp_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/news.talkwithrattan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4169"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/news.talkwithrattan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/news.talkwithrattan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news.talkwithrattan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news.talkwithrattan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4169"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/news.talkwithrattan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4169\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4171,"href":"https:\/\/news.talkwithrattan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4169\/revisions\/4171"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news.talkwithrattan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/4170"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/news.talkwithrattan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4169"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news.talkwithrattan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4169"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news.talkwithrattan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4169"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}