What is the conservation status of the Leopard?

The Leopard is listed as Vulnerable on the IUCN Red List. Facing a high risk of extinction in the wild.

Where is the Leopard found?

The Leopard is found in South Africa, Kenya, Tanzania, Botswana, Zimbabwe, Zambia, Ethiopia, Democratic Republic of the Congo, Mozambique, Namibia, Angola, Cameroon, Gabon, India, Sri Lanka, Nepal, Bhutan, Bangladesh, Myanmar, Thailand, Malaysia, Indonesia, China, Russia, Iran, Saudi Arabia, Oman, Pakistan, Afghanistan, Uzbekistan, Turkmenistan.

Leopard (Panthera pardus) — Conservation Status & How to Help

About the Leopard

The leopard (Panthera pardus) is the most widely distributed wild cat on Earth, found across sub-Saharan Africa, parts of North Africa, the Middle East, Central Asia, South Asia, and Southeast Asia. Solitary and largely nocturnal, leopards are ambush predators capable of taking prey ranging from dung beetles to adult elands, and they are known for hauling carcasses weighing more than themselves into trees to cache them away from lions and spotted hyenas.

Despite their adaptability, leopards are listed as Vulnerable on the IUCN Red List, with populations declining across much of their range. The primary pressures are habitat loss and fragmentation driven by agricultural expansion, direct persecution by farmers protecting livestock, and poaching for the illegal wildlife trade, which targets their spotted pelts and bones used in traditional medicine. Some regional subspecies, including the Amur leopard (Panthera pardus orientalis) and the Arabian leopard (Panthera pardus nimr), face a far more acute risk of extinction than the species-level assessment suggests.

Things worth knowing

Leopards are the only large African cat capable of climbing trees with a kill in their jaws, using powerful neck and shoulder muscles to haul prey that may exceed their own body weight.
The IUCN recognizes nine subspecies of leopard, several of which have populations numbering in the dozens or low hundreds of individuals in the wild.
Leopards have the broadest prey base of any wild felid, with documented kills across more than 100 prey species on the African continent alone.
A leopard's rosette pattern is unique to each individual, much like a human fingerprint, and researchers use photographic databases to identify and track individuals in the wild.
In some urban-edge landscapes, such as Mumbai's Sanjay Gandhi National Park, leopards live in close proximity to millions of people and prey heavily on feral dogs, providing a measurable check on dog populations.
Across West and Central Africa, leopard populations have been largely extirpated from areas where they were historically common, and the IUCN notes that the species has lost more than 31 percent of its historical range globally.

Leopard

Things worth knowing

0 organizations protect the Leopard