Habitat Suitability Area Analysis for Leopard to Mitigate Human-Wildlife Conflict in Junnar Forest Division of Pune Forest Circle

Human wildlife conflicts (HWC) issue has been experiencing across the country, mainly in adjoining area of the wild animal habitat since historical period. This conflict has become severe problem due to wild animal presence such as leopard (Panthera pardus), which is frequently noticed and expanding at sharing landscapes in contiguous human settlements areas and, results in adversely affecting both human and wildlife each other. The significant existence of leopards in Junnar Forest Division of Pune district, Maharashtra has caused this problem at grave scale. The forest division area is a mixed-use landscape covering about 5337 sq. km area and also covers some part of Western Ghats. Therefore, the human-wildlife conflict has been explored in the northern part of the Pune district in Maharashtra. The main objective of the research paper is to identify the habitat suitability area for leopard in the Junnar forest division by using Analytic Hierarchy Process (AHP) method. The methodology incorporates process, which include creation of thematic raster layers of parameters like Normalized Difference Vegetation Index (NDVI), land use land cover (LULC), distance from stream, distance from road, conflict risk zone, settlement, slope and aspect map. These thematic layers weighted according to their significance. The results of the analysis revealed that western mountainous and forest area is suitable for leopard habitat and in fact, it was original habitat of leopard. The study also highlights spatio-temporal aspect of the conflict. The most of the attacks on humans were reported near the agricultural area mainly adjacent to the sugarcane field or near human settlements. The attacks on humans and their pet animals occurred mostly between August, September and October months because it is sugarcanes cutting period. This study is pertinent to explore balance on dilemma of human safety and livelihood at one side and protection and conservation of the threatened species at other side.