In the sal-and-bamboo country of Nayagada Forest Division and the Mahanadi Wildlife Division’s Satkosia sanctuary, forest staff once counted six or seven black panthers — melanistic leopards whose coats swallow the light. Those numbers are no longer the ceiling.
Officials say camera traps have now captured more of the rare cats than earlier estimates, after a period when more than ten individuals were already believed to be using the landscape. The images, they say, are the strongest recent confirmation that the population is expanding, not just passing through.
“It is an exciting sight to see black panthers moving through the forest now,” Nayagada Forest Division officer Debarchana Nayak said, expressing satisfaction at the simultaneous rise of elephants, tigers and black panthers in the same woods.
The prey base that feeds those predators is swelling too. Gaur, spotted deer, barking deer, sambar and wild boar have increased “beyond expectation,” according to the local report. Elephants, counted at 33 earlier, now stand at 48 in the division — a jump Nayak cited as further proof that habitat and protection are working.
That rebound has a messy edge. Around Rukhi and the foothills of Balaram Pahada, wild boar and civets are being seen more often. Boars have even pushed into the town centre in search of food.
Environmentalists have asked the administration not to treat the good census as the end of the story: more animals mean more contact with people, and the same forests that can hide a black panther can also lose one to a snare, a road, or a frightened crowd.
For now, the department is framing the camera-trap haul as auspicious — a living scorecard that Nayagada’s jungle is still capable of holding big cats that most of India never sees. The next test is whether protection keeps pace with the animals walking back into the frame.
