In this article, I would like to consider a few aspects of the evolving and complex relationships between people and leopards, particularly in connection with the tourism industry. Let me begin however with an insight into the role tourism played in changing the public perception of leopards from a position of simply being unaware (or even indifferent) to seeing them as an icon for Sri Lanka.
Roll the clock back to 2001. I had been summoned to see the ‘Chairman’. He sat across a large wooden table in his office and asked me if it was true that I had agreed with his son that we will host three leopard researchers at the then Yala Safari Game Beach Hotel. When I confirmed this was true, he asked me in astonishment if I was aware of how much it would cost to provide two rooms and three meals a day for over a year.
I replied that it would be worth the cost as Sri Lanka would now gain access to international publicity through film crews, which was not happening then, especially so as the country only made the international news due its civil conflict with the LTTE. ‘How long would it take for the first film crews to arrive?’ he asked. I replied it could be two years as it takes time for a credible story to be built around research. I was with the late Herbert Cooray, the then Chair of the Jetwing family of companies.
He had appointed his son Hiran to be the Managing Director of Jetwing Hotels when Hiran was still in his twenties and operated on the basis that his son had to learn from the wins and losses of his decisions. With a sigh and not looking too convinced of the plan, he waved me off.
In February 2001, I had presented a paper to the Jetwing directors for a Jetwing Research Initiative (JRI) under which the Jetwing hotels would support field researchers by providing food and accommodation at their chain of hotels. This had been enthusiastically endorsed by the directors. A few weeks later Hiran called me to join him in his office with Anjali Watson and Andrew Kittle who together with the late Ravi Samarasinha wanted to study leopards in Yala.
This fitted in perfectly with the plans for the JRI. Hiran called the late Upali Weerasinghe and asked him if he was aware that he will be hosting three leopard researchers at the Yala Safari Beach Hotel (later renamed as the Yala Safari Game Lodge). ‘Not heard anything about this’ said a surprised Upali. A smiling Hiran responded that he did now and finished the call. A big giant in Sri Lanka’s tourism industry was now in the game to unite leopards with people and to integrate them into hard currency revenues.
Amila Salgado, a superb all-round naturalist had been hired as the first manager of Jetwing Eco Holidays. I needed to persuade him that we can market leopards as a safari product. We went on safari and I had regaled him with stories of leopard encounters at every bend of the dusty dirt tracks inside the park. After five game drives we had not seen one and he muttered darkly that he is not sure how he can tell clients that they can see leopards when he ain’t seen nothing. Even more aghast was Lalin de Mel the Director Marketing of Jetwing Hotels. He flatly refused to market leopard safaris claiming it would be unethical and a breach of trust.
He and other General Managers of the Jetwing Hotels had been in tourism for over 25 years and no one had mentioned Sri Lanka as being a place for Leopard. None of them had seen a leopard either. They could not tell fibs to tour operators. Hiran decided that the matter should be settled by holding one of the one in two month senior staff meetings at the Yala Safari. I could then take the general managers and senior staff on a game drive and show a leopard if they did really exist. The result was spectacular and Lalin very soon began to run full page advertisements with leopards stating Jetwing Hotels have interesting neighbours. And so it began.
Jetwing was not alone. Also present was Sanjiva Gautamadasa who later succeeded Lalin as Director Marketing and presently is supporting a study of small cats by the Small Cat Advocacy and Research (SCAR) at Malabar Hill, a boutique hotel in Weligama managed by him. Other champions emerged in tourism including Gehan Perera of Aitken Spence Travels. Not too long afterwards, Chitral Jayatilake of John Keells arrived on the scene and continues to make an impact today with his tireless marketing of Sri Lanka as a destination for wildlife film crews.
The local safari drivers eagerly embraced the idea. Yala became a place that visitors arrived not for a quick drive to the beach and a small chance of seeing an elephant, but on focused safari visits with five or more game drives.
A group of local leopard enthusiasts including Rukshan Jayewardene and Jehan Kumara were working on a book titled For the Leopard. Rukshan and Namal Kamalgoda kept me supplied with ground intelligence and anecdotes that helped my own efforts to photograph leopards and crank up the media coverage and refine the marketing literature we took.
I particularly remember Namal telling me a story when around 2001 he had been filling his vehicle with fuel at Tissamaharama when the petrol shed attendant had asked him why he was going to Yala. When Namal had replied that he was planning to photograph leopards, the attendant had been astonished and asked if leopards were found in Sri Lanka. The leopard was a long way away from becoming the darling of the public.
The intense commercial focus on leopards has had a negative impact in over-visitation and bad behaviour in parks. However, I have written on this topic before and pointed out that this is problem that has been solved many times before by park managers using methods such as defined routes each subject to a booking system for a defined number of tickets. With law and order and common sense and using modern technology this can be resolved if there is a will.
The public pretty much has been won over. Or more correctly, the public who visits leopard areas have been won over, especially if they are privileged enough to go on safari and take pictures. What more can tourism do? One key area is the mitigation of leopard human conflict, especially arising from livestock predation by leopards. One example of the large tourism corporates lending support is the provision of metal pens by the John Keells Foundation to farmers around Yala.
The Wilderness and Wildlife Conservation Trust (WWCT) has partnered with tourism companies and plantation companies and the Dilmah Foundation in the central highlands to mitigate human-leopard conflict. They are also partnering with the private sector to create wildlife corridors and to rehabilitate montane forests to improve the extent and quality of leopard habitat.
The Wildlife and Nature Protection Society (WNPS) is a long-standing conservation NGO that is also working with the private sector to create corridors for wildlife. They also have a sub-committee that supports research. Re-wilding and creating new habitat is a key area in which people can help as attitudes change towards the cats. Changing attitudes can also help by supporting research, even it is simply by the provision of logistics support such as food and accommodation at game lodges.
Many conservationists either as individuals or as small or large conservation NGOs are also raising awareness of the terrible toll that laying snares for bushmeat can inflict on animals like leopards. More lobbying and education is necessary to make the public understand that their wild boar starters from bushmeat can inflict terrible pain and suffering on a much loved and iconic cat.
More can be done by the private sector, the public and government to make the island safer for its top predators. As leopard spread their ranges, people will also need to adapt and learn to take their pets and livestock into safety in the night. There is also a pressing need to increase the research effort. Love is not enough, we also need evidence-based decisions taken on the back of solid research. In this area, a bold and ambitious undertaking would be to introduce an easy to get visa for skilled foreign nationals who on an unpaid basis will be willing to come to Sri Lanka and volunteer or work as interns. More on this is in my article published on 23 May 2025 in the Island newspaper.
The leopard is a compelling story of how an island’s people changed from indifference to being proud of its top cat and seeing it as a brand icon for marketing the island. It could also become a symbol of a renaissance in science and technology if the island could bring in foreign expertise to work with its local scientists and technologists through innovative ideas like a knowledge transfer visa.
By Gehan de Silva Wijeyeratne
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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