IWN Daily Digest — Saturday, 18 April 2026
149 Leopards. 14 Months. One Uncomfortable Number.
Madhya Pradesh takes pride in being India’s Tiger State. A new set of numbers suggests it may also be the country’s most dangerous place to be a leopard. An RTI response obtained by wildlife activist Ajay Dubey from the Madhya Pradesh Forest Department reveals that 149 leopards died across the state in just 14 months, from January 2025 to February 2026. The single largest cause of death: road accidents. Of the 149 deaths, nearly 31 per cent — 46 animals — were killed in collisions with vehicles, including 19 on highways. Old age and disease accounted for 24 per cent, intra-species conflict for 21 per cent, and poaching and retaliatory killings for around 14 per cent. In some areas, electrocution from illegal live wires — the same infrastructure killing tigers — was also a factor.
The data lays bare a troubling geography of risk. Seoni district, bisected by highways running through the Pench corridor, emerged as the highest-casualty zone. Narmadapuram recorded heavy road-kill near Satpura Tiger Reserve, and the Raisen–Bhopal belt saw consistent losses around Ratapani Wildlife Sanctuary. Ajay Dubey — the same activist whose PIL on tiger deaths at Bandhavgarh has been driving High Court action — described the figures as a “grim reality,” noting that a state proud of its wildlife credentials has “inadvertently turned into a graveyard for leopards.” Forest officials have pointed out that a 4 per cent mortality rate falls within acceptable limits for a big cat population of roughly 4,000. Dubey’s response was pointed: “Has this statement ever been used for humans?”
The Principal Chief Conservator of Forests, Subharanjan Sen, acknowledged that roads impose growing risks on leopards, and that while conditions are being imposed on new road construction and expansions, existing highways remain largely unaddressed. No one, Sen admitted, is presently talking about retrofitting older roads with safe-crossing infrastructure — underpasses, overhead passages, or adequate fencing at known hotspots. For a state with 3,907 leopards and some of India’s busiest wildlife-adjacent highway networks, that gap is becoming harder to ignore.
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