Big Cat In My Backyard by Nayan Khanolkar

Photo Credit: Nayan Khanolkar

Nayan Khanolkar is a self-taught avid nature photographer, who has been traveling the length and breadth of India to document Indian wildlife for over a decade and a half.

A decade-long career of bird photography, which gave him acclaim, was followed by an opportunity to work on documenting big cats in urban areas. Urban leopards have been his obsession for the last two years and have become the sole focus of his photography. It is an ongoing endeavour to sensitize people to animal behavior and raise awareness on conservation of Indias rich wildlife heritage through my pictures.

Big Cat in My Backyard

Nature, second prize singles

September 24, 2016

A leopard walks at night through Aarey Milk Colony, a residential, recreational and farming settlement adjacent to the Sanjay Gandhi National Park, in suburban Mumbai.

Some 35 leopards live in the park and increasingly venture into surrounding areas in search of prey such as the stray dogs that gather round garbage dumps. This raises the potential for human-leopard conflict, with reports both of attacks on humans, and of leopards caught in poaching traps.