leopards | Common News Update

July 13 (UPI) -- Scientists estimate there are only 84 Amur leopards left in the wild in China and Russia. The leopards live along the southernmost border of the Primorskii Province in Russia and the Jilin Province of China, and they're highly endangered. This new estimate was recently reported in the scientific journal Conservation Letters by scientists from China, Russia and the United States. The scientists teamed up to gather information from camera traps on both sides of the border. There are no records of the leopards in other parts of its former range, so this estimate along the border represents the total global population of the subspecies in the wild, researchers say. The camera traps allow scientists to identify each leopard by its unique spot pattern, providing a precise esti...

Sept. 14 (UPI) -- Scientists at the International Union for Conservation of Nature have taken snow leopards off the Red List. According to the IUCN, snow leopards are no longer "endangered."Now, the predatory cats are considered "vulnerable," a less severe classification.The snow leopard first joined the Red List in 1972, but the species' numbers have stabilized over the last four-plus decades.In order for a species to be considered endangered, there must be less than 2,500 specimens in the wild or they must be experiencing an extreme rate of decline. A three-year assessment -- featuring input from scientists in academia and researchers from a variety of conservation groups, including Panthera, the Snow Leopard Conservancy and the Wildlife Conservation Society -- determined the snow leopar...

Tag: leopards

Just 84 highly Amur leopards remain in the wild, study finds

Snow leopards no longer 'endangered,' conservationists rule