“Amur Leopard” (CC BY-NC-ND 2.0) by San Diego Shooter

Due to the increasing human population, and thereby increasing human activities such as logging, settlements, livestock grazing, road building and thereby fragmentation, the Amur Leopard (Panthera pardus orientalis) has become one of the rarest big cats in the world, with a shocking 80  individuals (T. Wang, et al. 2016) left in the wild. The human activities are ruining the leopards’ habitat and stressing their ecosystem, making it harder for cubs to survive long enough to reproduce.

Caroline (blog author). Threats on the Amur Leopard. Program used: Vizzlo

The Amur leopard is critically endangered according to WWF, and listed as vulnerable on the IUCN red list, because it is counted along with the other 8 subspecies of the African Leopard. The decrease in Amur Leopards started in the 1970’s but in the 1990’s it disappeared from the most of Northeast China (T. Wang, et al. 2016).

The Amur leopards are very hard to find, because they are spread out on a big area compared to their very small number of individuals – this is why the number of individuals left varies a lot according to different sources. However, the “population size is a key requirement for informing local decision-making in the species-based management and conversation initiatives” (T. Wang et al. 2016).

“Two leopard cubs together” (CC BY-ND 2.0) by Tambako the Jaguar

A study carried out by T. Wang et al. used 356 camera traps to estimate the leopard population, and their distribution, along with their competitors (Amur Tiger), their prey (deers and boars) and human presence.

They found that the leopard population had increased from 2013 to 2014, but that the increase likely originates from leopard immigration from the Russian border. Their total count of leopards within 12 months was 31. According to them, another study showed that there were 50 Amur Leopards in Russia in 2013.

They also found that where cattle was grazing, leopards were seldom spotted.The cattle is too big for the leopard to hunt it, and the cattle eats grass and small plants, outcompeting the deers, that the leopard prefers to eat. So in conclusion, cattle is a problem for the Leopards, because they make  it hard for the leopards’ pray to co-exist with the cattle.

While it is little, there is progress in saving the Amur Leopard from total extinction: In 2012 the Leopards were given a “safe haven” by the Russian government, called Land of the Leopard National Park, where the Leopards are protected, so people can not interfere with their habitant. Back in 2007 WWF and other conservationists successfully lobbied the Russian government to reroute a planned oil pipeline that would have interfered and endangered the Amur Leopard’s habitat.

Peer-Reviewed Works Cited: