By Jacki Yee, Andrew Kittle and Anjali Watson
Once draped in myth, mystery, and majesty, the Sri Lankan leopard (Pantheraparduskotiya) — the island’s top predator and apex carnivore — now finds itself in the limelight of a harsher reality. Although celebrated as a national wildlife treasure, its existence and more so what it represents – the great wild – is being increasingly challenged by the very force that once admired it from afar: humanity.
Despite being a highly adaptable predator, the Sri Lankan leopard is faced with an increasingly complex web of anthropogenic threats. While the species remains threatened and is now classified as ‘Vulnerable’ (VU) on the IUCN Red List, the truth on the ground could become even more dire. Understanding the multifaceted challenges it faces is vital if we are to preserve the ecological integrity of Sri Lanka’s forests — and the future of this iconic big cat.
Perhaps, the most pervasive and visible threat to leopards in Sri Lanka is the destruction of natural habitats. Forests that once stretched unbroken from hill to coast are now disrupted by human development.
The primary drivers of habitat loss for leopards stem from widespread human activity. Agricultural expansion is a major factor, with vast areas of forest being cleared to make way for tea, rubber, and cinnamon plantations previously, and more recently for vegetable and other crops, particularly in the Central and Southern regions of the island.
Rapid urbanisation, especially within biodiversity-rich areas such as the Central Highlands, continues to push the boundaries of development into once forested zones. Infrastructure projects — including housing schemes, roads, factories, resorts, and hydroelectric dams — are carving edges off unprotected forests, Protected Areas (PA) and forest reserves, further compromising and degrading critical habitat.
This habitat loss severely affects the leopards’ ability to reside, disperse and roam, hunt, mate, and raise their young. Leopards are solitary, territorial animals that require vast expanses to maintain healthy populations. With available range shrinking, competition can intensify, forcing many leopards into marginal lands where they can ultimately find themselves in the midst of, or adjacent to, newly expanded human settlements. This situation can result in increased human-leopard incidents, many of which can end in death for the leopard, as we have seen in the recent decade.
Closely related to habitat loss is habitat fragmentation, which creates isolated pockets of forest often too small to support viable leopard populations.
Habitat fragmentation is primarily driven by human encroachment and land-use changes. In provinces such as Uva and Sabaragamuwa, natural forests are being replaced by monoculture plantations and paddy fields, breaking up once-contiguous habitat. The construction of highways, rural roads, and fencing around changed land use, further alters the landscape, creating physical barriers that restrict movement or increases the risk for wildlife.
Fragmentation reduces connectivity between populations, limiting genetic exchange, increasing the risk of inbreeding and decreasing genetic diversity — a crucial combination for long-term survival of a species. Young leopards, in particular, are forced to face higher risks as they need to disperse from their natal ranges to establish new territories.
As forest patches get isolated, the ability to support sufficient wild prey reduces. This pushes leopards to traverse further afield, bringing them into riskier human dominated areas. The very protected areas meant to serve as sanctuaries are rendered ineffective if they are not connected via forested corridors.
Leopards, especially young adult males, depend on dispersal routes to migrate and establish territories of their own. However, these natural pathways are increasingly being disrupted or completely severed.
The loss of leopard dispersal routes is largely caused by expanding infrastructure and agricultural activities. Major roads and highways, such as the Southern and Central Expressway, the Eastern Bibile to Amara road and various rural feeder roads, have fragmented the landscape, reducing safe passage and natural movement of wildlife.
Within these fragmenting landscapes, the widespread use of snares, to protect vegetable crops, and increased poaching as human access to forests become easier, increases the dangers for leopards and other wildlife. Leopards that would normally colonise new territories, are possibly being restricted from doing so, and in the not too distant future, this could result in local extirpations.
Dispersal into new areas is already a high stress experience for young animals and additional stressors created by anthropogenic factors can act to heighten stress levels further, potentially leading to reduced fitness and survival rates.
Protected areas, while crucial, fail to provide the freedom of movement for wide ranging species such as the leopard, if surrounded by hard ecological or physical boundaries.
Hard borders around protected areas significantly hinder leopard movement and ecological connectivity. These barriers include agricultural lands, farms and human settlements, located right up against PA boundaries. The development of resorts and residential homes directly within and adjacent to PAs, eliminates natural buffer zones and intensifies human-wildlife conflict. It also reduces the actual effective size of that PA, causing wildlife to restrict itself and congregate within the more protected centre of a PA.
Research in the Wilpattu National Park shows that leopards tend to avoid the park’s periphery and stay in the core — effectively shrinking their usable habitat. This “edge effect” means the protected area is smaller in function than on paper. These hard edges also limit seasonal or climate-related movements and trap animals within human-dominated matrices.
With none existent or reduced buffer zones, leopards have little room to manoeuvre. Natural behaviour such as hunting and dispersing can, therefore, be restricted, leading to heightened intra specific conflict, reduced genetic flow, and increased pressure on core areas.
Snares are indiscriminate and deadly traps that pose an increasing threat to leopards. Constructed from simple wire loops, they are cheap, easy to set, and extremely difficult to detect, making them a widespread and dangerous tool in rural and forested areas. Farmers often use snares to protect their crops from wild boar, porcupine and black naped hare, while bush-meat hunters set them for illegal hunting of wildlife. This latter reason reduces the prey base available for leopards, and makes humans a direct competitor of the leopard.
In some cases, poachers intentionally or unintentionally target leopards, further exacerbating the risk. Regardless of the intent, these traps frequently injure or kill leopards, contributing significantly to known leopard mortality.
These crude devices on average are killing 8-10 leopards a year. Many more are maimed. Victims often die slow, painful deaths from infection, strangulation, or starvation. Even those that survive may be too injured to hunt or reproduce, removing key individuals from the gene pool. Since snares are often hidden and illegal, the full toll they take remains undercounted and underreported.
Snares usually catch leopards around the waist or neck; Left: wildlife officers removing a wire snare. Right: ‘Norma’ a monitored resident female who survived three months in the wild, prior to succumbing to her injuries.
Unlike snares, which often catch leopards unintentionally, poaching involves the deliberate hunting of leopards for their body parts or as trophies. In Sri Lanka, this seemingly low level threat, is driven by a demand for leopard teeth, claws, bones, and skin, which are used in some traditional medicine, worn to ward off evil, or kept as status symbols. The situation is worsened by weak law enforcement, with gaps in wildlife protection laws, limited patrolling, and low conviction rates allowing poachers to operate with relative impunity.
This targeted killing could impact leopard population numbers, especially if the trend increases, and could also disrupt the ecological balance within their habitats. Every poached leopard represents more than just a life lost; it signifies a rupture in the ecological web. As apex predators, leopards play a key role and removing them or reducing their already low numbers leads to imbalance and cascading ecological effects.
Targeted poaching often removes breeding adults, directly impacting population growth. The loss of even a few individuals in a fragmented, vulnerable population can be catastrophic.
A predator’s survival depends heavily on the availability of natural prey. Although wild prey- deer, primates, wildboar – are still present, reducing wild habitat, particularly due to deforestation, further reduces the vegetation and cover needed to support healthy prey populations.
Many forested areas are used for free-range cattle grazing, leading to increased competition for food and space, which puts further pressure on wild herbivores. If prey becomes scarce, leopards are forced to seek alternatives, such as domestic livestock, bringing them into conflict with humans, and increasing the risk to them from retaliatory killings and disease.
The threats faced by leopards in Sri Lanka are not isolated; they are interconnected and compounding. Habitat loss leads to fragmentation, which in turn isolates populations, increases conflict, and heightens vulnerability to snares and poaching. The decline of prey and the rise of human settlements only tighten the noose.
But Sri Lanka finds itself in a better position than many other nations with substantial extant biodiversity, including wild prey for leopards, as well as reasonable forest cover and a climate that allows for effective reforestation and natural regeneration of degraded areas. A well-entrenched conservation ethic which sees sharing space with wildlife as normal creates additional momentum for long-term conservation.
Conservation solutions must be multi-faceted: protecting existing habitats, reconnecting fragmented landscapes through identified ecological corridors, and strengthening law enforcement. Community engagement and snare removal campaigns are also crucial in areas where these are now very real threats.
Wildlife needs stepping stones of connected forests within the fabric of a human dominated landscape. We must move beyond thinking of Protected Areas as islands. Instead, they should be viewed as nodes in a larger ecological network — one that requires political will, scientific insight, and public support to thrive. The leopard is an ideal proxy for wider conservation on this island. It’s unique ‘Umbrella species’ status – the influence it exerts on larger landscapes and biodiversity – means that ensuring this island leopards future, could ensure our functioning ecosystems.
We must act now, so that the Sri Lankan leopard does not become a shadow in the future— a symbol of a wilderness we failed to preserve. It bodes well that we still have leopards, let us not take that for granted.
This article first appeared in the Sunday Observer on the 3rd of August 2025.
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