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Conservation of top predators is one of the best ways of conserving biodiversity because they maintain the stability and functioning of ecosystems in which they live. In addition to being the most widespread big cat and one of the most adaptable and tolerant of anthropogenic influences, the leopard plays important ecological roles such as balancing food chain, controlling zoonotic diseases, etc. Despite this, declining leopard populations have not received much conservation attention. Human leopard conflict is a major issue increasing rapidly with the growing needs of the growing human population. This study carried out habitat suitability modelling using the maxent model to project the current and future suitable habitats of the common leopard. LULC classification was done to assess the changes in land use and land cover over a period of 20 years. Our results showed that there has been a huge increase in built up land and a drop in dense forest cover since 1999. Habitat suitability was determined using 110 occurrence locations, the results of which showed that distance from roads, railway and LULC had highest contribution in suitability of leopard habitats. In 2019, out of the total land area of Uttarakhand, about 12.81% was found to be highly suitable and 26.4% moderately suitable. Over a period of 10 years, in a weak mitigation scenario, climatic and socio-economic changes are expected to cause a change in leopard habitat suitability. Highly suitable habitats are projected to decrease and poorly suitable habitats are projected to increase. This may further lead to increased conflict and faster loss of the already threatened animal. Therefore, better management and planning of land use and more effective protected area networks are necessary to reduce the issue of conflict to conserve the threatened species and their precious habitats.
Keywords: Panthera pardus, habitat suitability, maxent, human-leopard conflict, LULC change
