The Changthang Wildlife Sanctuary in Ladakh, also home to the Snow Leopard, Urial, Kiang and the Himalayan Marmot, has an estimated 3,500 free roaming dogs, that now threaten every one of these species. Neeraj Mahar, a researcher from the Wildlife Institute of India, who has studied the birds of Changthang, says, “During the nesting season, I also encountered dogs feeding on the chicks and eggs of BNC and Bar-headed Goose.”

By all accounts, the biggest threat to these birds are free roaming dogs. They specifically caution that dogs may be responsible in large measure to the possible extinction of the Great Indian Bustard and the Black Necked Cranes (BNCs) abandoning their only breeding area in India.įor instance, the breeding success of the BNC, the state bird of the former state of Jammu and Kashmir, has less than halved to 29 per cent in 2016, from 60 per cent in 1995.

While this is clearly a human-made disaster, we, the people and the administration at all levels, seem to have become indifferent and numb to the horrendous consequences unfolding around the country. Consequencing this tragedy for wildlife is the obfuscation of otherwise clear wildlife protection laws.įree roaming dogs are threatening India’s wildlifeįrom possibilities of canine distemper and other deadly viruses being transmitted to populations of felids to reports of actual attacks on pinnacle predators in different landscapes, to threats of hybridisation of wild canids and actual predation on ground nesting birds, experts warn of dogs endangering and contributing to the loss of wild fauna. There are an estimated 60 million dogs in India and much has been written about the threats that free-ranging / feral dogs (approximately 35 million) pose to wildlife.

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