India's Wild Leopard (Full Episode) | Nat Geo Wild

Wild cats are one of the most diverse groups of carnivores on the planet. And my home India has more species than any other country. My name is Sandesh Kadur and I've made it my life goal to film them all. That was the most incredible sighting of a tiger. But with so much development, India's wild cats are under serious pressure. I've spent hundreds of hours filming leopards. But India has two other feline species that are even more mysterious. And they couldn't live in more remote habitats. In my rapidly changing country, I want to find these big cats in the wild before it's too late. For 25 years, National Geographic explorer Sandesh Kadur has been traveling to India's wildest places, documenting his country's outstanding wildlife. He's developed a reputation for revealing the lives of some of the world's most elusive predators. His pioneering camera traps have allowed him to document the secret lives of almost every Indian cat species. The leopard was the first big cat I saw in the wild. And I've been drawn to them ever since. Their power, energy, and intelligence have made them the world's most successful big cat. Leopards are found from the southern tip of Africa all the way to the eastern end of Russia. And from India's most remote landscapes to its busiest cities. This adaptable big cat has learned how to live in nearly every environment. But India has two mysterious leopard cousins that are so elusive that I've yet to really capture them in the wild. One of them is the snow leopard. Here in the far north of India, the snow leopards are the high altitude specialists. No other predator in the world is better adapted to living in the mighty Himalaya, a region so cold and inhospitable it's nicknamed the third pole. Everything about this cat has evolved perfectly for its environment. Wide paws act as snowshoes, giving them superior grip on icy terrain. And it can use its thick furry tail almost as long as its body, not only for balance but also to keep warm. A deep nasal cavity warms the frozen mountain air and their large lungs ensure they can get enough oxygen to hunt. Then there's the snow leopard's distant cousin, the clouded leopard, the most ancient feline of the modern cat world. This evolutionary link between big and small cats couldn't live in a more different habitat. Here in the dense jungles of northeast India, the clouded leopard is top cat. Their large cloud-like coat patterns and small size allow them to disappear in the tangled forests and their superb tree climbing skills mean they can travel through the canopy undetected. Until recently, both the clouded leopard and snow leopard were so rarely seen, they were considered virtually impossible to film. But I don't just want to find these cats, I want to get the best photographs yet of them in the wild. And help make sure they are protected. This is just insane. My adventure started when I traveled up to the remote corners of northeast India to try and document clouded leopards. I found this fascination for them in the local culture. But this was all built around a huge trade in their body parts. It was painful to see. All I found were dead cats. Poaching was a big issue here. Just when Sandesh had all but given up on finding a clouded leopard in the wild, he had a lucky break. I heard about these clouded leopard cubs being rehabilitated back into the wild, so I rushed to document the whole process. After months of searching, Sandesh finally had his first encounter with clouded leopards. In terms of filming a new species of cat, I mean, this was it. This was the holy grail. A female clouded leopard on average produces a litter of two to three cubs. With their mother gone, these four-week-old orphans need round-the-clock care. Only a handful of people have ever seen wild clouded leopard cubs, and this tiny pair had a team dedicated to getting them into the wild as soon as possible. These cubs, just two pounds each, are vitally important to the future of their species. After seven months of dedicated care, it's time for the cubs to start living in the wild. This is a conservation first. It's never been tried before. The cubs' new enclosure is up on the trees, giving them a safe refuge from elephants and encouraging them to get used to a life up in the canopy. In their new home, the cats can learn the skills they need to survive in the wild. Every moment I spend with these cubs, I'm learning something new about clouded leopards. While most of the small cats can purr, only the big cats can roar. Clouded leopards are midway between big cats and small cats. They have their own unique vocalizations. It's been about eight months since the cubs have been brought into the forest, and every day they've been taken around through the jungle on long walks, and they've grown accustomed to a lot of the sights and sounds of the jungle. They're still very much like kittens, though. They haven't quite started to make a kill yet. Their cat instincts are slowly being seen. They're very arboreal. They love climbing on trees, especially fallen logs like this. Clouded leopards' short, powerful legs have a unique adaptation. They can rotate their rear ankles to climb down tree trunks head first. They can even hang off branches using only their hind paws, giving them a leg up when hunting in the forest. And hopefully in a few more months, they'll start making their own kill and living like wild cats. After more than a year in captivity, learning to hunt and fend for themselves, the cubs are ready for release. The door to their enclosure is left open, allowing the young clouded leopards to return to their forest home. I would love to return and film these cats when they're back in the wild. Though Sandesh may never find these cats again, he knows he'll be back to film clouded leopards as they were meant to live, wild and free. A year later, back home in Bangalore, Sandesh is busy testing some new equipment. If he's going to get the shots he wants, he needs more eyes in the jungle. So he's built a bespoke set of camera traps that will be triggered to record life in the forest. But then he gets some shocking news. I can't believe this. I've just received some horrific images from northeast India. Two clouded leopards have been killed by poachers. If I don't get there now, I might lose my chance to document them in the wild. Wildlife photographer Sandesh Kadur has just heard about two clouded leopards killed in northeast India. This isn't the area where my cats were released, but it could just as easily have been my pair. I've got to get back to the jungle and document clouded leopards in the wild before it's too late. This has become Sandesh's most important mission. If he can photograph clouded leopards in the wild, he can try to push for greater conservation measures in northeast India. India has always been famed for its tigers. But in the far northeast of the country, it's the clouded leopard, the tiger of the treetops, that is king of the jungle. If nobody knows about them, how can they care about them? After two days traveling, he's made it up to clouded leopard country. Now he just needs to decide where to place his camera traps. If anyone knows where I might photograph a clouded leopard, it's wildlife biologist Priya Singh. She's been studying wild cats in this part of India and has agreed to share her knowledge. In my opinion, this is one of the best places in the world for clouded leopards. Oh, look at that. Oh, he's come right up the camera. Oh, he's coming right along the street trunk. So how do you come to pick this spot for your camera trap? If they are to move through the forest floor, they would prefer open trains like these. Saw some scrape marks down there. But we have very little information on clouded leopards and what areas they prefer to move through. They do spend a lot of time up in trees, but it's really hard to find places up in trees to put camera traps. So what are my chances of seeing and filming a clouded leopard out here? I spent four months here and I was in the forest almost five days of the week and I never saw one. Okay, well, let's get to work. Set up some camera traps. Most cats like to walk along these unobstructed pathways. So I'm hoping that this camera trap does the job for me. Two weeks later, Sandesh heads back into the jungle to check his traps and finds a reason to be optimistic. This is the closest we've been so far to a clouded leopard. Fresh scat, probably not more than 24 hours old. We're getting closer. Now let's see where he's gone from here. Sandesh's experience as a tracker guides him towards the elusive cat's trail. No, it looks like he's taken the ridge line up. Look what we have here. This is exactly the kind of tracks and signs we're looking for. The scrape mark is an indication that one of the cats has walked along this trail. Following the trail turns up something unexpected. There's a strong smell of something that's dead and it's going to track, see if we can find the carcass. It's a barking deer. Most of it has been eaten up. I'm not sure if this kill was made by a clouded leopard, but if there is a clouded leopard in the area, it'll most likely be back. This is too good an opportunity for Sandesh to miss. At night, his camera finally detects something, but it's not a clouded leopard. Dholes, Indian wild dogs, hunt in packs, and are among the most successful carnivores in these forests. Sandesh's cameras have detected many different species, both at day and night, including a rarely seen sun bear and the enigmatic marbled cat. At around 10 pounds, a marbled cat looks like a miniature clouded leopard, but is less than half the weight. The cameras even capture a binturong, a rarely seen small carnivore that walks like a bear and acts like a cat. Oh my gosh, what an amazing shot of a palasa squirrel leaping across the trail. But despite a healthy mix of potential prey, he hasn't yet managed to capture a clouded leopard. I'm just hoping that they just come in the camera trap. That'd make me very happy. But so far, nothing. As the team continues up the mountain, they don't realize they're about to come across the most dangerous predator of all. Poachers. Wildlife photographer Sandesh and his team have just scared off poachers in the forest. He quickly calls the forest department to report them. Yeah, the bushnell we just recovered over here, they've thrown it here. I think while they were running, they must have thrown it down. We're still missing two SD cards with content on it, and they have one rifle, they have one gun with them. Okay, fine, we'll wait for the forest guards to come up. Checking footage on the recovered camera card reveals something shocking. Not only did the poachers steal our cameras, they were trying to hide evidence by taking away the memory cards. And now we found that they've actually killed a monkey. In their rush to escape, the poachers dropped a bag. The contents reveal exactly how they were operating. Locally made bullets. These guys were here trying to hunt. Despite hunting being banned in India, poaching is a big problem here. The dense jungles of northeast India are home to some of the most rarely seen primates, including the capped langur. But when he gets down to base, he hears some news. The poachers have been apprehended. The risks they took show there's clearly still a demand for illegal wildlife parts. It's only later that I realized just how lucky the clouded leopard was. In the morning, a young male tripped the camera. Less than an hour later, the poachers walked up the same trail. With fewer than 10,000 clouded leopards left in the wild, it's vital that the areas they live in are protected. With just a week remaining before he has to travel home, Sandesh heads deeper into the jungle to find trails that are off-grid to even the most determined poachers. It's time to check if the cameras have captured anything. Okay, fingers crossed. Oh my God, look at that. Oh, I can't believe it. That's the shot we've been waiting for. A clouded leopard on a tree. It was right here on the same branch. Came up and gone like that. After months of work, Sandesh Kadur has just fulfilled a lifelong mission. Each of his carefully placed camera traps has recorded detailed images of clouded leopards in the wild. These images can help prove the importance of this landscape for the survival of these incredible cats and hopefully get the clouded leopards the protection they deserve. With his cat finally in the bag, it's time for Sandesh to go after his final leopard, the gray ghost of the mountains, the snow leopard. The conditions will test his methods to the limit. Why do snow leopards have to live in such an insane habitat? National geographic explorer Sandesh Kadur has managed to capture intimate shots of India's smallest and most rarely seen big cat, the clouded leopard. Now he travels over a thousand miles northwest to the Himalaya to track down the snow leopard. The highest altitude big carnivore on the planet. By some estimates, there could be as few as 4,000 snow leopards left in the wild. They live only in cold, high altitude regions. But as climate changes, their mountain homes are changing faster than most places on earth. With warmer summers and less snowfall, I want to find out exactly how these high altitude felines are coping. But his friends at the forest department have got urgent news. The wildlife warden has just reported a critically injured snow leopard. These cats hunt in one of the toughest environments on earth, testing their skills every day. They'll go after smaller prey such as marmots, but they favor bigger meals like ibex, urial, and blue sheep. One of these mountain goats will feed a snow leopard for over a week. But they are agile, alert, and very hard to catch. One slip in this unforgiving terrain can mean death. But this cat is lucky. Villagers found it at the base of a cliff. Alive, but barely. The forest department is racing to provide it the urgent veterinary attention it desperately needs. We have a young male snow leopard that was found near the village of Likse. He may have gotten into a territorial fight. He's got an injury on his face. We've just done an x-ray and there doesn't seem to be any sign of breakage. But obviously this snow leopard is very weak. The vets give the leopard fluids and try to keep it comfortable. With a little bit of care, hopefully the snow leopard will come out of its shock and we'll be able to release him back into the wild. Sandesh didn't expect his first encounter with a snow leopard to be so intimate. He came to understand how this predator is coping with a threat facing all wildlife here. The Himalaya is warming above the global average and two-thirds of its glaciers might vanish by the end of the century. Sandesh wants to document what these changes mean for these cats that have evolved to thrive here. To find these felines, he gets help from a team of locals who know these mountains better than anyone. Norbu, our main man here, has organized our trackers who are going to be going out every day and scanning the hillside and keeping an eye on what's going on and report any snow leopard sightings. But before I head out, I want to meet one of the village elders. In Buddhist culture, stories about different creatures are passed down through the generations. I learned that the locals here call the snow leopard Shan. I need to seek his blessings and knowledge in order to meet the Shan. He's just informed us that they heard the call of the Shan a few days ago in the valley right behind us. The next morning, Sandesh gets the news he's been waiting for. So we've just got information of a snow leopard with two cubs up on the ridge. So we're going to rush there right now and fingers crossed. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Okay. Wildlife photographer Sandesh just got news that a female snow leopard with two cubs has been spotted in the valley. Any information like this, we just cannot take the risk of letting it go. Can't leave a single stone unturned, especially when it comes to a snow leopard sighting. His diligence has paid off. There's a mother and two cubs and they're resting up high on that hill and feel incredibly fortunate to be seeing three snow leopards just on our second day. That's a good start. Born blind and helpless, snow leopard cubs grow rapidly and by three months start following their mothers. These two will stay with their mother for nearly two years, learning how to survive in these unforgiving mountains. She's just gotten up and going up along that ridge. I mean, it's incredibly far. Even though we've been fairly lucky in seeing snow leopards, it's been near impossible to get a close-up shot even with a thousand millimeter lens. So the only way we're going to capture intimate shots of snow leopards is by setting up remote cameras. Growing up in these mountains, local tracker Norbu developed a sense for picking out their movements through the rocky terrain. Sandesh relies on this vital knowledge of how the cats move. Snow leopards mainly travel during dawn and dusk. Able to jump up to 50 feet in a single stride, there are few places they can't reach, even among these boulders. But to communicate with other snow leopards, they use scrape marks and scent rocks, something Norbu has learned to find. Armed with this information, Sandesh sets up his cameras across the mountains. A few days later, he gets a surprising call. A snow leopard has raided some village livestock. In the living memory of the residents of the village, no snow leopard has ever entered into the cowshed and killed livestock. They've just seen where the snow leopard has entered this cowshed from. There's still some remnants of snow leopard fur stuck on the thorny bush. And this is what they do to keep snow leopards out, is have a line of thorns. But the snow leopard found a break in the defenses, came right through and attacked the calf right here. And there was a battle between the mother of the calf and the snow leopard. And there's even some blood stains over here. But in that whole process, the snow leopard managed to kill the calf and then took off. When I asked Namgyal if he's upset or angry, he's, well, it was bound to happen at one point or the other. So there's nothing much you can do about it. Snow leopards consume their hard-won kills over several days. So this cat will likely return. That gives Sandesh the perfect opportunity to document the cat at a kill. I'm sitting here in a hide at 14,000 feet elevation. And I'm sat here with three pairs of thermals, headgear, gloves, several pairs of socks. And it's still freezing. I wish I was as adapted to the cold as the snow leopard. It has the densest fur amongst any of the big cats. Its paws are insulated. It's got fur between its pads. After many hours, a predator eventually comes to the kill. But it's not the one Sandesh was expecting. Red foxes are the world's most widespread canine species found across the northern hemisphere. Like leopards, they are intelligent and highly adaptable, never passing up an opportunity for a free meal. But in these mountains, they need to be alert. As dusk approaches, an even bigger canine emerges. Gray wolves are another top predator here in the Himalaya. I don't know how this snow leopard is going to fare with a wolf in the area. I doubt it'll be able to defend itself. But during the night, Sandesh's cameras detect something that's rarely ever been seen before. After staking out a cow killed by a snow leopard, Sandesh's nighttime camera traps have recorded rarely ever seen behavior of a snow leopard chasing off a wolf. In the age-old conflict between cats and dogs, it's clear that the snow leopard wins that battle, at least tonight. The villager's generosity means the snow leopard will have enough food for well over a week. There's a snow leopard resting on the rock. He's coming down to the kill. This is just incredible. This is the view I had always wanted. My hide barely 200 feet from a wild snow leopard. I finally have my chance to witness one of India's feline phantoms up close. In the wild, snow leopards can live on average about 12 years. And I expect as they get older, like other big cats, they have to take more risks to make a kill. I don't know what pushed this snow leopard into killing a cow. If it was hungry or injured or just being opportunistic. But I hope the warming of these mountains isn't going to push these magnificent animals into more contact with people. To understand the bigger picture, Sandesh retrieves his camera traps from across the mountains to see what they reveal. Over the course of two months, they've captured an intimate window of wild Himalayan life. And Sandesh's skillfully placed camera traps have allowed him to document extraordinary images of snow leopards. He's surprised to see that they regularly use the same paths as people and livestock, showing just how frequently their domains overlap. Despite this, he's learned that in this area, locals rarely have any trouble living alongside these elusive cats. But before leaving, he has one final old friend to see. The rescued snow leopard found injured at the bottom of the cliff. His fans have named him Licky, the snow leopard from the village of Lixay. Having suffered a near fatal head injury, timely help by the locals and vital veterinary care saved this cat's life. Now fighting fit, Licky is ready to be released back into the wild. The forest department is driving him to the spot from where he was rescued. He's finally back home after two months of intensive care with the forest department. Even though these cats do impact livelihoods, this snow leopard's life was saved by people. This is the challenge of conserving wild cats in a country with over 1.3 billion people. What I've seen on my journey exploring India's secret leopards shows that we need tolerance and respect to live alongside these big cats. People tend to forget what they don't see. My job is to photograph these felines and remind people that these elusive cats exist and must be protected. And by doing so, I hope that these mysterious leopards continue to roam these last wild places.