On August 3, 2026, an adult woman entered a sugarcane field in Lalapur Pipalsana village of Thakurdwara tehsil in Moradabad district to collect fodder for her livestock. The village lies close to the Ramganga river. Around noon, while she was working alone inside the tall crop, a leopard attacked and killed her. When villagers began searching for her, they found her body partially consumed inside the field.
The following evening, another incident was reported from Sikniwala village in Nagina tehsil of Bijnor district. An eight-year-old boy walking with his parents near the Sukro river was dragged by a leopard into nearby sugarcane fields. His body was later recovered from the crop.
Both incidents received widespread media attention and triggered capture operations by the Forest Department. An adult male leopard, suspected by the department to be involved in the Sikniwala incident, was captured from the area, while nine leopards were captured from the Thakurdwara region near the Ramganga river.
Two incidents, two districts, but a similar setting: rivers, dense vegetation, sugarcane fields and villages located close to wildlife habitat. They also reflected a familiar response to conflict, where capturing individual leopards became the immediate focus.
However, the attacks did not stop despite these capture operations. On August 18, 2026, an adult woman from Balia Bahapur village, near Lalapur Pipalsana, entered a sugarcane field in the afternoon to collect sugarcane leaves, locally known as angole, for her livestock. She was attacked and killed by a leopard inside the field. The following evening, around 7 pm on August 18, a seven-year-old boy from Arfapur Khajuri village near Najibabad, Bijnor district, was reportedly picked up by a leopard while walking along a village path. After an overnight search operation, his partially consumed body was recovered from a nearby sugarcane field the following morning. Two days later, another incident was reported from a village in Nehtaur block of Bijnor district, near the Gangan river, where a two-year-old child was reportedly picked up by a leopard while sleeping inside a house without a door.
These incidents highlight that despite repeated capture operations, human-leopard encounters continue, suggesting that removing individual leopards alone cannot address the wider conditions that allow conflict to persist.
These are no longer landscapes where leopards can be easily separated from people.
Across western Uttar Pradesh, from Bijnor, Moradabad and Amroha to Rampur, Bareilly, Meerut and Muzaffarnagar, leopard sightings are becoming part of everyday rural life. The combined population of Bijnor, Moradabad and Amroha districts was over 10.2 million according to the 2011 Census, with nearly 71 per cent living in rural areas. A large part of this population depends on an agricultural landscape dominated by sugarcane, where farms, villages, rivers and wildlife habitats overlap.
For decades, leopards were mainly associated with forests and forest edges. Today, that boundary is becoming harder to define.
Western Uttar Pradesh has always remained connected to the Shivalik forests through a network of rivers and streams. The Ramganga, Khoh, Malan and Ganga rivers, along with several seasonal streams, pass through this landscape, linking forest patches with agricultural fields and villages.
These rivers are not only channels of water. The vegetation along their banks provides shelter and movement routes through an otherwise open agricultural landscape. For wildlife, such corridors can offer pathways between fragmented habitats.
At the same time, the agricultural landscape has changed significantly.
Over the past few decades, sugarcane has become the dominant crop across large parts of western Uttar Pradesh. Unlike many seasonal crops, mature sugarcane remains tall and dense for several months, creating patches of cover within a landscape heavily used by people. For leopards, these fields provide concealment close to villages, livestock and potential prey.
However, sugarcane alone does not explain the rise in leopard encounters. It is one part of a broader transformation that includes expanding settlements, fragmented habitats, changing livestock practices, riverine vegetation and the availability of food resources around human settlements.
The result is a landscape where agricultural fields are no longer only places of cultivation. They have also become spaces where wildlife can move, hide and survive.
Leopards were never strangers to western Uttar Pradesh. They have long inhabited the forested landscapes along the Shivalik foothills, including the Najibabad Forest Division, Kalagarh Tiger Reserve and Amangarh Tiger Reserve. What has changed in recent years is not the presence of leopards itself, but their increasing visibility beyond traditional forest boundaries.
This shift became more visible after 2019.
That year, a series of fatal leopard attacks occurred around the Malan river landscape in Bijnor district. Within a short period, six people were reportedly killed. The leopard suspected to be involved in these attacks was later killed in a retaliatory action, after which the incidents stopped.
But removing one leopard did not remove the conditions that allowed other leopards to move through agricultural areas.
The growing concern became particularly visible in 2023, when Bijnor recorded around 18 human fatalities attributed to leopard attacks. These incidents increased public anxiety and placed pressure on authorities to respond.
However, the pattern pointed towards something beyond individual “problem leopards”. It reflected a landscape where the separation between wildlife habitat and human-use areas was becoming increasingly difficult to maintain.
Several factors contribute to these encounters. Seasonal flooding and waterlogging can influence animal movement and change the availability of cover. Riverine vegetation provides routes through intensively cultivated areas. Free-ranging dogs, abandoned cattle, poorly managed livestock, and open disposal of animal carcasses can create additional food opportunities around villages. Unsecured poultry farms and livestock holdings may further increase the chances of leopard presence near settlements.
Human activities also shape the risk of encounters. Farmers and agricultural workers spend long hours inside dense sugarcane fields, especially during cultivation and harvesting seasons. Women collecting fodder, children moving through agricultural areas, and people travelling alone may face greater risks in places where visibility is limited. In some villages, routine activities such as open defecation can bring people into areas where leopards may also be present.
No single factor explains the increase in encounters. Together, these changes describe a landscape where people and leopards are increasingly sharing the same spaces.
Western Uttar Pradesh is not simply experiencing more encounters with individual leopards. It is witnessing a broader shift in the relationship between a highly adaptable predator and a densely cultivated human landscape.
As leopard encounters increased, capture became the most visible response to conflict.
Following complaints from villages, cages are installed, and leopards are captured, relocated, or sent to rescue facilities. During recent periods of heightened conflict, including the Kanwar season, more than 150 cages have reportedly been deployed across parts of the landscape. In Bijnor district alone, around 50 leopards have been captured this year.
Capture can be necessary when a particular animal poses an immediate and demonstrated risk to people. However, it cannot, by itself, address a problem that is shaped by the wider landscape.
The reason is simple: removing one leopard does not remove the conditions that allow another leopard to occupy the same area.
This is perhaps the most important shift required in how western Uttar Pradesh approaches leopard conflict. The question should not only be, “Which leopard is responsible?” It should also be, “Why does this landscape continue to support leopards?”
Our research from Bijnor suggests that encounters are not randomly distributed across time and space. Season, vegetation, and human activity influence when people and leopards are most likely to come into close contact. During the sugarcane harvesting period (November to April), farmers and agricultural workers spend long hours inside fields, increasing opportunities for encounters. During the monsoon (July to September), dense vegetation and reduced visibility create a different set of risks, particularly for people moving alone and children.
These patterns matter because conflict prevention works best when it is based on understanding when and where risks are highest, rather than responding only after an attack has occurred.
The future of leopard management in western Uttar Pradesh cannot rest with the Forest Department alone.
Farmers, agricultural workers, Panchayats, district administrations, schools, livestock departments, researchers and conservation organisations all have a role to play.
A farmer working alone inside a dense sugarcane field faces a different risk from schoolchildren moving alone through village surroundings. Women collecting fodder, livestock owners and agricultural workers may also face different situations and require specific prevention measures.
Improved livestock housing, safer practices during night hours, better waste management and reducing attractants around villages can help lower the chances of conflict. Schools and Anganwadi centres can play an important role in building awareness among children and families through locally relevant information.
Most importantly, communities should not be viewed only as victims of leopard conflict. They are the people who understand these landscapes closely. Their experiences, observations and participation will be essential for any long-term conservation approach.
Leopards are unlikely to disappear from western Uttar Pradesh. The rivers will continue to flow, sugarcane will remain a dominant part of the agricultural landscape, and villages will continue to expand. A highly adaptable predator like the leopard will continue to find ways to move through this changing environment.
The question, therefore, is not whether western Uttar Pradesh will have leopards. It already does.
The question is whether institutions, policies and communities can adapt alongside a species that has already adapted to living among people.
The future of conservation in this region will not be decided only inside forests. It will also be shaped in sugarcane fields, along riverbanks and at village edges, in the shared spaces where wildlife and people increasingly meet.
Shivam Chauhan is PhD Scholar at the Department of Wildlife Sciences, Aligarh Muslim University
Kaleem Ahmed is Assistant Professor at the Department of Wildlife Sciences, Aligarh Muslim University
Views expressed are the authors’ own and don’t necessarily reflect those of Down To Earth