"These cats face a plethora of threats from shrinking habitat, diminishing prey, conflict with humans, poaching, and more. But a new report describes isolated success stories that show population declines can be reversed."
"The state of the world’s leopards inspires hope, with some of the eight subspecies stabilizing or slightly rebounding. But the serious peril of others is causing alarm, according to a new assessment by the world’s leading scientific authority on global extinction.
Though leopards are the most resilient big cat, they have declined by more than 30 percent over the last 22 years—which is three generations. They have disappeared from entire swathes of their historic range and may now be extinct in 26 countries that they formerly roamed. These findings, released on June 27 by the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN), are part of an update to its Red List of Threatened Species.
IUCN lists leopards as “Vulnerable,” a category given to species facing a high extinction risk due rapid population declines or other factors. But some subspecies are in critical condition.
Leopards inhabit 62 nations across Africa and Asia, from Senegal’s Atlantic coastline to eastern Siberia. These cats live in every imaginable landscape, from sea level to 17,000 feet: forest, mountains, savanna, desert, jungle, and even Sanjay Gandhi National Park in the center of Mumbai, a city of 21 million people. It’s the widest geographic range of any big cat."
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