Jennifer Miller, PhD  2012 TRI Fellow in India  Mapping the
Kill: Predicting Tiger and Leopard Livestock Depredation in
Central India    Livestock depredation by tigers and leopards
causes substantial losses to villagers in rural India that can
motivate retaliation against these rare carnivores. A more
effective solution would be to prevent livestock kills in the
first place by grazing livestock in areas where carnivores are
less likely to attack. From December 2011-August 2012, I
surveyed sites where tigers and leopards attacked domestic
livestock in Kanha Tiger Reserve, Madhya Pradesh. I interviewed
livestock owners and Forest Department officers and collected
historical livestock compensation records to investigate grazing
routes, livestock management and depredation trends. I also
measured ground-level habitat structure and broader-scale
landscape variables around kill sites and randomly selected
comparison plots to examine the importance of various factors in
tiger and leopard hunting behavior. This data