Amur leopard

The cat that stalks alone: An endangered solitary hunter

^{Information reviewed by Pavel Fomenko, Far East Biodiversity Coordinator, WWF-Russia.}

The leopard is rarely found in cold or high-elevation environments and is best known in its more familiar home in the savannas of Africa, where populations are relatively stable.

However, in the northernmost part of its range, a rare subspecies of this cat lives in the temperate forests and harsh winters of the Russian Far East. This is the Amur leopard (Panthera pardus orientalis). It is also known as the Far East leopard, the Manchurian leopard or the Korean leopard.

IUCN's 2000 Red List of Threatened Species classifies the subspecies as Critically Endangered, and the CITES has listed it on Appendix I.

Physical Description

The Amur leopard has some very distinguishing features. The hairs of its summer pelt are 2.5 cm long but in winter they are replaced by 7 cm long ones.

Apart from its long winter coat, which is a light colour in the winter, and more reddish-yellow in the summer, the Amur leopard is easily told apart from other leopard subspecies by its widely spaced rosettes with thick borders. It also has longer legs, probably an adaptation for walking through snow.

Adult males weight around 32-48 kg, and exceptionally large males weigh up to 75 kg. Females typically weigh 25-43 kg.

Previous Population and Distribution

The distribution of the Amur leopard has been reduced to a fraction of its original range. It once extended throughout northeastern ("Manchurian") China, including Jilin and Heilongjiang Provinces, and throughout the Korean Peninsula. The species range in Russia was dramatically reduced during the seventies, losing about 80% of its former range.

Current Population and Distribution

Today, the Amur leopard inhabits about 5,000 km². The last remaining viable wild population, estimated at less than 40 individuals, is found in a small area in the Russian Province of Primorsky Krai, between Vladivostok and the Chinese border.

In adjacent China, fewer than 10 scattered individuals are estimated to remain. In South Korea, the last record of an Amur leopard dates back to 1969, when a leopard was captured on the slopes of Odo Mountain, in South Kyongsang Province.

What are the main threats to the Amur leopard?

Habitat loss and fragmentation

It is estimated that between 1970-1983, the Amur leopard lost an astonishing 80% of its former territory. Indiscriminate logging, forest fires and land conversion for farming are the main causes.

Still all is not lost. Even now large tracts of forest, which are ideal leopard habitat exist. If these areas can be protected from unsustainable logging, rampant forest fires and poaching of wildlife, the chance exists to increase the population of the subspecies in the wild.

Find out more about habitat loss

Prey scarcity

There are still large tracts of suitable habitat left in China, but the prey base in these forests is insufficient to sustain populations of leopards and tigers. Prey populations will recover if the use of the forests by the local population is regulated and if measures are taken to limit the poaching of ungulates. For the Amur leopard to survive for the long term, it needs to repopulate its former range. But for that to happen, prey populations need to recover first.

Poaching and illegal trade

The Amur leopard is poached largely for its beautiful, spotted fur. In 1999, an undercover investigation team recovered a female and a male Amur leopard skin, which were being sold for US$ 500 and US$ 1,000 respectively, in the village of Barabash, not far from the Kedrovaya Pad reserve. This suggests that there is a market for such products within the locality itself.

Agriculture and villages surround the forests where the leopards live. As a result the forests are relatively accessible, making poaching a bigger problem than elsewhere. Not only for the leopards themselves, but also for important prey species, such as roe deer, sika deer and hare, which are hunted by the villagers both for food and hard cash.

Find out more about wildlife trade

Conflict with humans

Amur leopards are particularly vulnerable because of their preference for deer, a natural predatory preference but dangerous in the Russian Far East due to direct human involvement: farmers in the Russian Far East raise deer for human consumption, and to produce antlers for the Asian medicine market.

In absence of wild prey, the leopards often venture into the deer farms in search for food. Owners of these farms are quick to protect their investment by eliminating leopards attacking their stock. Presently, the leopard's most immediate threat comes from such retaliatory or preventive killing.

Find out more about human-wildlife conflict

Vulnerable population size and inbreeding

Additionally, the Amur leopard is threatened by the extremely small wild population size, which makes them vulnerable to "catastrophes" such as fire or disease, to chance variation in birth and death rates and sex ratios (e.g., all cubs born for two years might be male), and to inbreeding depression.

Father-daughter and sibling matings have been observed and it is possible that this may lead to genetic problems including reduced fertility. Such matings do of course occur naturally to a certain extent in large cat populations, but in a very small population there is no possibility of subsequent outbreeding. Studies have shown that the number of cubs per adult female fell to 1 in 1991 from 1.9 in 1973.