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Of all the 'big' cats the Leopard is the most adaptable; it can survive in semi-arid areas, in rocky uplands and grasslands as well as forests. It is able to feed on a wide variety of prey species up to the size of antelopes.
At Thrigby Hall in Norfolk they breed the rarest sub-species, the Amur Leopard from the Amur-Ussuri region linking Russia, China and Korea. There may be fewer than thirty left in the wild. These animals are a part of an international breeding programme.
This beauty is the resident female at Marwell Zoo near Winchester, Hants.
The leopard (Panthera pardus) is a member of the Felidae family and the smallest of the four "big cats" in the genus Panthera; the other three being the tiger, lion and jaguar. Once distributed across southern Asia and Africa, from Korea to South Africa, the leopard's range of distribution has decreased radically due to hunting and loss of habitat, and the leopard now chiefly occurs in sub-Saharan Africa. There are fragmented populations in Pakistan, India, Indochina, Malaysia, and China.
Due to the loss of range and declines in population, it is graded as a "Near Threatened" species. Its numbers are greater than other Panthera species, all of which face more acute conservation concerns.
The leopard has relatively short legs and a long body, with a large skull. It resembles the jaguar, although it is smaller and of slighter build. Its fur is marked with rosettes which lack internal spots, unlike those of the jaguar. Leopards that are melanistic, either completely black or very dark, are one of the big cats known as black panthers.
The species' success in the wild owes in part to its opportunistic hunting behaviour, its adaptability to habitats and its ability to move at up to approximately 36 mph.
The morning of day 13, our final day in Kenya. We have only a few hours before we need to catch a noon flight to Nairobi, so the question was how best to use our time.
We had a discussion the previous evening, and the consensus was to see if we could find a leopard, the one animal we had not had a chance to get a good look at. Our tour guides did a terrific job leveraging their Maasai connections to track down one. They made it look so easy and routine – of all the African animals, the extremely secretive and lonely leopard is the hardest to find.
We had great lighting, and not only we found a leopard, we also got very close to it, and on one occasion, it even went right past our vehicle, and got to within about 4-5 feet.
This is such an amazing and rare animal to see, so I took a 100+ shots. Here are a few.
African leopard at the Maryland Zoo in Baltimore, Maryland. Once he/she was up and walking, the long tail washeld high up in the air. I tried to get a shot but the fence got in the way......
The leopard is a member of the Felidae family and the smallest of the four "big cats" in the genus Panthera; the other three are the tiger, lion and jaguar. Once distributed across southern Asia and Africa, from Korea to South Africa, the leopard's range of distribution has decreased radically over time due to hunting and loss of habitat, and the leopard now chiefly occurs in sub-Saharan Africa. There are fragmented populations in Pakistan, India, Indochina, Malaysia, and China. Due to the loss of range and continual declines in population, the cat has been downgraded to "Near Threatened" species; its numbers are greater than that of the other Panthera species, all of which face more acute conservation concerns.
I just went through my older photos and so i wanted to add some of them here..
This photo was taken at Zoo Bratislava.
Ein Leopard im Moremi-Wildreservat (Okavangodelta, Botswana).
A Leopard in the Moremi Game Reserve (Okavango Delta, Botswana).
A leopard feeding at Van Vihar or Open zoo at bhopal.
Though the snap is not that of a free natural world, but the fierceness of the hungry leopard has somehow come out well.
My weekly rant, taken from www.facebook.com/jackkinross and other places...
WE NEED TO BE CLEVER, LIKE SNOW LEOPARDS ARE, TO SAVE THE WILD TIGER. DO WE BAN THE CELEBRITY BLOGGER?
I’ve counted about 60 news items at www.wildtiger.org since my last rant. It’s the usual mix, good, bad, happy, sad, insane and fantastic… a bit like life really. There were a few more stories than usual on Snow Leopards, those elusive mountain cats, including great images from Panthera of a clever specimen trying to steal camera trap, very cool.
A friend of mine calls Snow Leopards “Sneakies” as a term of endearment and pure respect. She is amazed at the incredibly clever way this animal operates in some of the harshest terrain on the planet. This brings me to my point.
For several years now I’ve been receiving (and so has Mark, our analyst) a news feed which gives overviews of environmental, political and humanitarian events and how they might affect the work we do at WildTiger. The feed comes from someone I respect immensely, a highly skilled researcher I have known for many years now. His organization supplies this information, at a fair price, to a small clientele he trusts to handle information responsibly.
Since we restarted our news section properly at the start of this year, coinciding with increased use of the social networks, I’ve had a lot more time online myself. I was warned there were some crazies out there, of course I already knew this but after a few weeks I am surprised at the extent of it. On our actual news feed we simply post from respected media, lobby groups, government and non-government organizations. Where we can we try to verify but we also make it clear on our website “that truth is in the eye of the beholder” and that everything has to be read for what it is, no more.
What we don’t post is poorly researched, regurgitated crap. The crazy stuff. And wow, as I said, there is a fair bit of it out there. I’m not really talking about media sources (we all know there are some real spinners as well as brilliant researchers in that area) but more about the counterproductive blogging and commentary that seems to just spit out negative stuff we already know about…
And now I’m really at my point! That stuff does not help anyone. It does not help save the tiger, it does not help save anything. It does more harm than good.
Recently, a “celebrity blogger” decided to climb on the bandwagon regarding the tiger trade and do some serious China bashing. The blog piece gave us nothing new, either in information or images. I got advice not to name this person (do some trawling if you must but trust me, it was crap) but what I will say is that the biggest irony was that while the “celebrity” got stuck into China and their treatment of tigers there was a convenient neglect of mentioning the slaughter of tigers and wildlife by the British Raj, interesting because of where this blogger hailed from.
WildTiger didn’t post the article. The piece gave no mention of the work by Chinese activists and lobby groups, in fact I don’t think the blogger has even been to China. The blogger did endorse the Ban Tiger Trade petition, which I have signed, and my thanks to the many of you who have signed as well but that petition is being run in a professional, respectful manner. My immediate instinct was to start a “Ban the Celebrity Blogger” petition.
I’m only using this as an example. There is a so much negative, ill informed, racist commentary from people who have never ever been to a tiger reserve or a buffer zone, even a third world country. This lack of understanding of the true dynamics of tiger conservation (and when I use that term I mean conservation in general) when aired on social networks and blogs actually harms the good work being done and the positivity of many of those doing it. It is not clever.
There is some brilliant writing out there regarding the plight of wildlife, the environment, human interaction with natural forces. John Vaillant’s brilliant book “The Tiger” has become a bible to many, a bit like Peter Matthiessen’s “The Snow Leopard” several years ago. These books are “clever” like the snow leopard itself.
Soon I’ll be back in the jungle supplying equipment and training to anti-poaching teams as part of WildTiger project work. I’ll also be conducting interviews with some excellent tiger people outside the jungle, bringing those feeds to show the people in isolated areas that the world does care, that there are people working hard globally to win this thing.
What I won’t be doing is showing the guys certain “celebrity bloggers” and the idiotic crap which can appear on Facebook etc because that would be a very stupid thing to do.
And to save the Tiger we have to be clever, like a Snow Leopard…