vlad.tribnet.com / Issue #554 / Environment / Reading article...

Russian and Chinese ecologists announced plans to carry out a cooperative census of Amur leopards from Feb. 1 until Feb. 15, however a heavy snowfall which occurred Tuesday in the Primorye territory postponed the start for a few days.

“The start of the census aiming to estimate the number of the Far Eastern leopards in the territories of Primorye and China has been delayed for three days due to the snowfall,” a press statement from the Far Eastern branch of WWF, or the World Wildlife Fund, reported.

“The leopards will not be active for about two days after the snowfall,” head of WWF’s branch in Vladivostok Yuri Darman said. According to him, for proper registration ecologists should wait for several days for the wild cats to leave tracks. The areas to be checked number eight spots in total, with five located in Primorye and three in China.

The census will be conducted by Russian and Chinese specialists who are expected to use similar registration methods. The results will be shared and compared. The methods include logging the animals’ tracks on the snow and examining their parameters, determining the wild cats’ age and sex.

The Far Eastern Leopard census is normally carried out every three years. The latest census in 2003 revealed a very low population of the wild cat – Primorye ecologists registered only 30 leopards.

The Far Eastern leopard is the rarest wild cat on earth listed in the International Book for Endangered Species. The animal’s habitat is mostly in the Khasansky and Nadezhdinsky counties of south-western Primorye, with the rest of the leopards inhabiting the north of China. The Far Eastern leopard population has not seen any increase in the past few decades.