IWN Report — Sunday, 2 August 2026
A thread by a wildlife conservationist is going viral on X, claiming that Uttarakhand forest officials have issued orders to kill leopards and bears found responsible for fatal attacks on people — and demanding the state reverse course. The claim by Gaurav Bhardwaj, founder of the conservation group Tiger Trails, centres on Pauri district, where he says 8 of the state’s 13 identified conflict leopards are located, along with most of the bears now marked for culling.
By his account, more than 40 people have died this year in attacks by elephants, tigers, leopards and bears in Uttarakhand — which he says records the highest number of human-wildlife conflict cases in the country.
The Numbers
Only 7–8 of those deaths involved elephants and bears, Bhardwaj says; leopards and tigers, in roughly equal measure, account for the rest. He points to a regional split: Kumaon carries a higher tiger density and lower human population, while Garhwal — including Dehradun and Haridwar — has more people and fewer tigers, pushing leopard conflict higher there instead. He also says nearly 40 tigers are now held at the Jim Corbett rescue centre because of human-wildlife conflict, 21 of them added recently, most of them young tigers raised by their mothers in buffer zones close to villages.
Political Cover
Bhardwaj traces the pattern to the early 2000s, when falling tiger and leopard numbers coincided with people occupying large stretches of forest land — some, he says, with political backing. He argues encroachment continues because state governments treat encroachers as a vote bank rather than enforcing forest law, and that the problem extends well beyond Uttarakhand to Rajasthan, Maharashtra and Madhya Pradesh.
The Demand
Bhardwaj has called on Chief Minister Pushkar Singh Dhami and the state’s Chief Wildlife Warden to revoke or thoroughly review the kill order, and to free illegally occupied forest land as a first step toward a longer-term plan. The Chief Wildlife Warden of Uttarakhand did not immediately respond to IWN’s emailed request — sent after regular office hours — for comment on the kill order and Bhardwaj’s claims.
Sources: Gaurav Bhardwaj (@gaurravbhrdwj) on X
