Leopards remain relatively abundant in parts of the Satkosia landscape, but a Wildlife Institute of India study has found them functionally extinct at two surveyed sites, highlighting a stark imbalance in Odisha’s leopard recovery.
Bhubaneswar, Odisha | October 4, 2026
A new Wildlife Institute of India (WII) study has raised concern over the condition of leopard populations in parts of Odisha, finding that the big cats are doing relatively well in some protected forests while declining—or virtually disappearing—from others.
The Odisha Forest Department-sponsored study examined leopards and their prey across important sites in the Similipal-Satkosia landscape, a large but fragmented forest system containing both protected and unprotected areas.
Leopards Functionally Extinct at Two Survey Sites
The most alarming finding concerns Kuldiha Wildlife Sanctuary and Hadagarh Wildlife Sanctuary, where researchers described leopards as functionally extinct.
At Rebana Reserve Forest, the species survived at a low estimated density of only 2.2 ± 0.70 leopards per 100 sq km.
The situation was markedly different in the Satkosia landscape.
Researchers estimated leopard densities of 17.9 ± 1.75 animals per 100 sq km in Satkosia and 11.9 ± 1.66 per 100 sq km in Mahanadi.
The sharp contrast between these areas provides an important clue to what may be determining the leopard’s fortunes.
Where There Is Prey, Leopards Are Doing Better
The study found that Satkosia and Mahanadi supported greater numbers of medium- and large-bodied prey, which also formed an important component of the leopard’s diet.
By contrast, medium- to large-sized ungulates—excluding wild boar—were either absent or occurred at low densities in Kuldiha, Hadagarh and Rebana. Smaller prey species were comparatively more common across the surveyed landscape.
This suggests that protecting leopards cannot be separated from protecting the animals they hunt.
A forest may still appear green and capable of supporting a large carnivore, but if hunting and other pressures progressively remove deer and other prey, it can become an increasingly difficult landscape for leopards to survive in.
Camera Traps Used to Identify Individual Leopards
Researchers carried out systematic camera-trap surveys in Kuldiha Wildlife Sanctuary, Hadagarh Wildlife Sanctuary, Rebana Reserve Forest and the Satkosia and Mahanadi wildlife divisions of Satkosia Tiger Reserve.
Individual leopards were distinguished using their unique rosette patterns, while researchers used spatial capture-recapture modelling to estimate population density. Prey abundance was assessed using camera-trap detections, and leopard scat collected in Satkosia was analysed to study diet.
The findings allowed researchers to compare not merely leopard presence, but how leopard abundance changed alongside the availability of suitable prey.
Odisha’s Wider Leopard Decline Has Been Visible Before
The latest findings reinforce an already worrying trend.
The national Status of Leopards in India 2022 assessment estimated Odisha’s leopard population at 568, compared with 760 in the previous national assessment. It also reported that leopard occupancy had declined from areas previously occupied by the species.
The same national assessment found something particularly significant: leopard densities had increased in Odisha’s tiger reserves even while the statewide population declined.
It concluded that much of the recovery effort appeared concentrated within tiger reserves and called for stronger patrolling, prey recovery and habitat management outside protected areas.
The Odisha government’s own wildlife publication subsequently cited the national estimate of 568 leopards in 2022.
Poaching and Habitat Fragmentation Remain Major Threats
Odisha’s leopard problem is not entirely new.
The earlier 2018 national assessment had already identified lack of prey, bushmeat hunting, targeted poaching for leopard body parts and habitat fragmentation as major conservation concerns in the state.
The new study indicates that prey availability remains fundamental to the problem.
Researchers have therefore called for a landscape-scale conservation strategy rather than concentrating protection only in isolated wildlife reserves.
Corridors Could Be Critical
Protecting surviving leopard populations also requires keeping forests connected.
The WII study recommends reducing human-related threats, improving monitoring in forests outside the protected-area network and establishing or maintaining ecological corridors that allow leopards to disperse between suitable habitats.
Such connectivity is particularly important in a fragmented landscape like Similipal-Satkosia.
If surviving populations become isolated from one another, the presence of healthy leopard numbers in one forest does little to help another forest where the species has disappeared.
Declining Prey Can Also Increase Conflict
There is another potential consequence when natural prey becomes scarce.
Leopards are adaptable predators and can survive close to people. When forests cannot provide sufficient prey, however, animals may increasingly turn towards the edges of villages and other human-dominated areas in search of livestock, dogs and other accessible food.
That can increase the possibility of encounters with people and consequently intensify human-leopard conflict. The new report therefore emphasises rebuilding prey populations as part of leopard conservation.
A Tale of Two Odishas for the Leopard
The study ultimately presents two very different pictures of leopard conservation within the same state.
In parts of Satkosia and Mahanadi, relatively abundant prey coincides with healthy leopard densities.
In Kuldiha and Hadagarh, researchers found the leopard functionally extinct. Rebana retains the species, but at low density.
That contrast carries an important conservation message.
Protecting the leopard itself is not enough. Its prey, habitat and the forest corridors connecting populations must survive with it.
Unless conservation expands beyond the strongest protected areas, Odisha could increasingly find itself with islands where leopards thrive surrounded by forests from which one of India’s most adaptable big cats has quietly disappeared.
Source: The Hans India, October 4, 2026.
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