Janata Waghoba – ''The Big Wise Cat''

Aryaman Darda presented a cheque of rupees 1 lakh to Mrunal Ghosalkar (Awareness and Outreach Coordinator at Centre for Wildlife Studies / Wildlife Conservation Society – India)

About Janata Waghoba-
Western Maharashtra is an agricultural landscape with high density of human and that also supports wild carnivore populations including leopards. Livestock rearing and farming are people’s main occupations here. Most human-animal negative interactions in these areas arise from livestock depredation by leopards, and sometimes having sightings while working in the farm.
People are not aware about the precautions that they need to take in order to take human safety as well as to reduce livestock losses. Also, there is a lack of understanding of species amongst the villagers.

Janata Waghoba has been initiated with the collaboration between Maharashtra Forest Department, Rufford Foundation -Doodling the Cat (Sequel II): Using youth as a strong community connection to sensitize locals on safely sharing space with leopards to reduce conflicts. The aim is to give proper knowledge to people on leopard behavior and precautions that have to be taken in areas where leopards are present.

The project has been initiated since August 2017 in Niphad taluka, Nashik, Maharashtra. The group of Forest Department higher officers, ground level staff, Scientists, Researchers, Conservationists and Artists have come together to start the awareness drive.

They have used traditional knowledge which was gained from the communities who are sharing space with big cats as well as scientific knowledge to create awareness material. This gives information related to precautions that people need to take so that problems to both people and leopards from each other are minimized. They have used the medium of art to share this knowledge with school and college children.

Janata Waghoba organizes a talk in schools and colleges on human-leopard interactions in consultation with the Forest Department officials, Gram Panchayat (locally elected body) members and the School Principal. Based on the students’ interest and enthusiasm, we select some students and they are recognized as Leopard Ambassadors.

The duty of leopard ambassadors is to inform their parents, other family members and villagers the safety measures to be employed to reduce livestock loss, injuries to human and also, leopard behavior. Students try to make villagers understand the species which they want to listen. These young people are working towards creating awareness amongst their own community to create safer places between humans and leopards.