Bhubaneswar: The Union Ministry of Environment, Forest and Climate Change (MoEFCC) will organise a series of thematic events across the country to highlight India’s leadership in big cat conservation and promote the objectives of the International Big Cat Alliance (IBCA).

These programmes will focus on India’s five wild big cat species — tiger, Asiatic lion, leopard, snow leopard and cheetah — and will showcase conservation achievements, challenges and collaborative actions by the Centre and state governments.

The thematic events will be organised at Gir in Gujarat, Bhopal in Madhya Pradesh, Bhubaneswar in Odisha, Gangtok in Sikkim and Chandrapur in Maharashtra.

The event at Gir will showcase the conservation of Asiatic lion while the same in Bhopal is scheduled to focus on cheetah conservation.

According to the ministry, the event at Bhubaneswar will display leopard conservation. Besides, the authorities will celebrate the International Day for Biological Diversity at the event.

Issues related to snow leopard conservation would be the focus area at Gangtok event while tiger conservation is the theme for Chandrapur event, said the ministry.

“These pre-summit programmes are designed to promote awareness, strengthen stakeholder engagement and highlight India’s conservation success stories under flagship initiatives of the Centre and how these have resulted in establishment of the IBCA under India’s leadership,” said the ministry.

The ministry further revealed that leopards are among most widely distributed big cats in India and often inhabit in areas close to human settlements. “The theme of the Bhubaneswar event would be coexistence in human-dominated landscapes,” stated the ministry.