NEWSLINK-Hopeful Signs of Recovery for the World’s Rarest Big Cat

While poaching and environmental degradation have had disastrous effects on animal species across Asia, one highly endangered cat has seen a small but important rise in its numbers, researchers say. The Amur leopard, which was once found across the Korean Peninsula and parts of Russia and China, is now considered the rarest big cat, with just a few dozen existing in the wild. But their numbers in Russia have risen from just 30 in 2007 to nearly double that in the latest count, according to the conservation group WWF. The group said 57 were found in Land of the Leopard National Park in the Russian Far East. The park, which was established in 2012, is in Primorsky Krai on the finger of land west of Vladivostok, where Russia, North Korea and China meet. An estimated eight to 12 Amur leopards live in China, the WWF says. Chinese researchers counted 13 Amur leopards between April and June 2013 in the Hunchun Siberian Tiger National Nature Reserve, in the Chinese province of Jilin just across the border from the Russian park. Results of a new survey of the leopards in China will be published in a few months and will show their population has increased, said Wang Tianming, a researcher at Beijing Normal University, without giving specifics. “The number of leopards in China is extremely hopeful, higher than anything that’s been reported in the media,” Dr. Wang wrote in an email. There are many uncertainties preventing a precise count of Amur leopards. The cats often -READ MORE-https://www.ibcworldnews.com/2015/02/28/hopeful-signs-of-recovery-for-the-worlds-rarest-big-cat/