NEWSLINK: South Africa Gives Leopards a One-Year Break From Being Hunted

Hunters heading to South Africa to notch the “leopard” category on Africa’s “Big Five” big-game scorecard will have to take 2016 off.


That’s because the country’s Department of Environmental Affairs announced Tuesday it will not issue permits to hunt the beautiful big cat this season, effectively banning hunting for the year.

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NEWSLINK: 27-pound bobcat killed near Temple

A local man called and killed a 27-pound bobcat at about 6:05 p.m. Monday on his deer lease near Stampede Creek on the Warren Ranch between Temple and Moody.

The Rev. Rick Reed, pastor of Calvary Baptist Church, said it’s the biggest cat he’s ever killed.

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ARTICLE: How Jaguars Survived the Ice Age

The mastodons, ground sloths, and sabercats are all gone. They all slipped into extinction around 10,000 or so years ago, along with an even wider variety of fantastic beasts and birds that fall under the category “megafauna.” But not all the Ice Age megamammals died out. We spend so much time mourning the losses that we often forget the survivors that carry whispers of the Pleistocene world. Among these resilient beasts is the jaguar.

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ARTICLE: Protecting Asia's elusive snow leopards

Tom McCarthy is the executive director of the Snow Leopard Program at Panthera, the global wild cat conservation organization. The views expressed here are solely his.


Barren, wind-swept rock is all I can see through the telescope.


But my Ladahki associate assures me that "shan is there," and I trust him since he is one of the best wildlife spotters in all of the Himalayas.

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UK SIGHTING: Schoolboy comes face-to-face with huge black panther when out running

Elliot Evans was terrified when he was stalked with a huge, black panther while out running.


The 16-year-old schoolboy was on his regular run on a village playing field in in Wickham Market, Suffolk, when he spotted the deadly big cat.

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VIDEO: Baby Mountain Lions Try Hard To Act Tough ... And End Up Looking Cuter

Known as P-46 and P-47, the two newest residents of Santa Monica Mountains National Recreation Area were recently implanted with tracking devices after researchers found their well-hidden den.

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UK SIGHTING: Big cat in North Yorkshire?

These pictures were taken at Low Marishes near Malton. It appears to show a big cat in the field. 

They were taken by Highways gritter driver Michael Armitage. He's sent the pictures to North Yorkshire Police too and says he now believes there is something the rumours of Big Cats on the prowl because he's seen it for himself now.

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NEWSLINK: ‘Tiger Temple’ to Give Up Big Cats, Activist Says

Wildlife officials will remove 50 tigers from the infamous Tiger Temple in Kanchanaburi province tomorrow, according to animal rights activists, who have long accused the facility of being complicit in trafficking the very animals it claims to protect.

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NEWSLINK: Simi the tiger arrives at IoW Zoo

After a difficult 2015 having lost three of its big cats, Sandown’s Isle of Wight Zoo is looking to the year ahead with optimism after it welcomed Simi the tiger.


Rescued from a travelling circus, Simi arrived at the zoo on Sunday following several months of bureaucratic challenges.


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PHOTOS/VIDEO: Longleat Tigers Enjoy Snowmen!

Heads are going to roll- snowmen heads, that is. No real heads were harmed in this snow day adventure in which four silly tigers became tiny kittens when they encountered their first ever snowmen.

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NEWSLINK: Unwanted perfume or aftershave? Give it to the tigers, lions and other big cats at The Wildlife Heritage Foundation

Did you know leopard's love Intimately Beckham, but the African lion's don't call it their favourite?


Some of the most seductive and sweetest scents linger around the Wildlife Heritage Foundation in Smarden near Ashford and that's because the animals appreciate perfumes and aftershaves.


The sanctuary is appealing for unwanted bottles of fragrance to liven up the animal's enclosures.

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ARTICLE: The zoo where humans are caged

Tourists and predators have switched places at a zoo in China, where visitors are paying to be locked in a cage and stalked by big cats and bears.


Lehe Ledu Wildlife Zoo in Chongqing city is giving people the chance to get up close with some of the world's most ferocious animals - who they can even feed by hand.

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ARTICLE: Salvage the pride of the Maasai Mara

How many mornings have I woken up at first light to the roaring of lions – the most thrilling sound in Africa? Then the sun comes up, a blood-red bubble on the eastern horizon, throwing long shadows across the savannah as herds of elephants emerge from the forest and a new day begins in the land of the Marsh Lions.

Paradise it was when I first saw the Maasai Mara and paradise it remains, but its very future is now in doubt since eight of its famous Marsh Pride were poisoned in December, leaving the reserve’s reputation as Kenya’s premier tourist destination in tatters.

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ARTICLE: Dwindling forest cover - struggle for survival

With dwindling forest cover, many places across Karnataka have been troubled by human-animal conflicts. Pavan Kumar H takes a look at the Sandur region, which recently saw a series of human-leopard encounters


For the last two months, around 20 forest guards, armed with sticks, a ‘locked’ gun and two tranquiliser guns, have been patrolling the forests of Sushilnagar in Sandur taluk of Ballari district in teams.

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NEWSLINK: Endangered Florida Panthers Need ‘Critical Habitat’ Now

With more than 20 million residents, Florida is booming in both job growth and population growth. The state’s booming health is spelling bad news for wildlife habitat. The situation for Florida panthers has gotten so bad that U.S. Rep Vern Buchanan, R-Fla., is calling the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service (FWS) to designate “critical habitat” for them now.

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ARTICLE: Big Cats and People Live in Close Quarters in India

The numbers of large carnivores, especially leopards, are increasing in private lands and lands outside the protected-area systems in India, bringing new challenges for coexistence.

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ARTICLE: Photographer spends ten years capturing incredible sepia portraits of big cats

This series of spectacular sepia shots gives a stunning insight into the lives of the big cats at a Macedonian zoo - where a dedicated photographer spent 10 years recording their behaviour.


Photographer Goran Anastasovski devoted a decade of his life to taking snapshots of the lions, tigers and leopards when at their most unguarded and intimate.

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NEWSLINK: Claws out over big cat's ordeal

Kruger National Park rangers alerted by tourists sedated an injured lion with a dart gun on Tuesday so that they could remove a poacher's snare from around its neck.


The lion was treated by a vet and released.

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NEWSLINK: Unusual Litter Mates Being Raised Together At Six Flags Great Adventure

Spots and stripes have taken over the nursery at Six Flags Great Adventure’s safari as the veterinary team welcomes a Siberian tiger cub, the first tiger birth at the safari in 13 years, and an African lion cub. What makes the situation so unique is that for the first time, the team is hand-raising the two fuzzy, female “big cats” as one litter, despite being two species that would typically never meet in the wild since they are native to different continents.

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NEWSLINK: Cougars possibly living in Alabama

This was the headline last week from the state wildlife service. Here are their comments.

“The state investigates all reported sightings, but there hasn’t been any documented evidence of a big cat in Alabama since 1947, when a Florida panther was killed in Chilton County. The last verified cougar in Alabama was killed in St. Clair County over 50 years ago.

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NEWSLINK: Cougar killed on Redlands had little fear

Fresh snow and a sharp-eyed witness enabled Colorado Department of Parks and Wildlife officials to put down a mountain lion Tuesday night on the Redlands, but there’s no all-clear on the horizon.


“We still have a couple mountain lions I’m watching” in the Redlands area, said JT Romatzke, the Grand Junction Area wildlife manager for CPW.

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NEWSLINK: Big cats seen in Durango, New Mexico

Big cats have been spotted a little too close to home lately.


A mountain lion has people in Durango a little nervous. According to the Durango Herald, it’s been spotted a lot in the Junction Creek area over the last few weeks. One resident saw it feeding on a deer on the side of a highway.

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UK SIGHTING: Locals terrified after another sighting of the 'Beast of Bolton' with 'greedy yellow eyes'

New sightings of the 'Beast of Bolton' have been reported by terrified locals in the northern town.
Several reports of a giant cat prowling the streets at night have been recorded by townsfolk, with the latest claiming the animal is the "size of a car bonnet".

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ARTICLE: 17,000 dogs in Corbett a big threat to its big cats

The thriving big cat population at the Jim Corbett National Park might be a show piece for successful conservation, but the famous wild life sanctuary's tigers and leopards might be at risk from canine diseases from some 17,000-odd dogs living in villages in the 5km buffer zone.

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NEWSLINK: Woodward Park evacuated after mountain lion spotted

A day at the park interrupted for visitors at Woodward Park as a big cat apparently made a brief appearance.


Park employees and Fresno Police evacuated the park for a couple hours after the sighting Thursday morning. A woman spotted the big cat near the BMX area and she took pictures. But after that, the animal vanished.

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ARTICLE: BioPark doing big part to save threatened species

Snow leopards, Socorro doves, Guam Micronesian kingfishers and slender-snouted crocodiles. None of them is native to New Mexico, or the United States for that matter, yet all are a little safer from extinction in this new year because of work being done at the Rio Grande Zoo in Albuquerque.

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ARTICLE: Florida Panther faces extinction

They’re the official state animal, yet the Florida panther is one of the most endangered species on Earth, with fewer than 180 of the big cats alive today. The breeding population of Florida panthers now exists only on the southern tip of the Sunshine State.

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