SIGHTING, IRELAND: Warnings after possible panther sighting in Armagh and Down (via Ellie Glover)

Police in Newry and Mourne are appealing for anyone who may have seen a large black cat - possibly a panther - in the Newry area to get in touch, reports Belfast Live.

In a Facebook post on Saturday, they wrote: "On June 16, 2017 at 11am Police received a report of what has been described as a large black cat, possibly a panther, sighted in the Moneymore Road area of Newry!

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NEWSLINK: Animal Reserve anticipates August opening

If all goes as planned, 30 big cats will make the trek from a facility in Brevard County to the Central Florida Animal Reserve in St. Cloud in August.

But after securing the $100,000 needed to complete the Animal Reserve, there is one more financial hurdle to clear. The Animal Reserve needs to raise $25,000 to make sure the welfare of every cat is in good standing before the move can even begin.

“We made the initial goal for the actual $100,000. So we got that whole thing matched. It was a fantastic thing.

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VIDEO: 30 big cats at Brevard County facility to be moved to St. Cloud

Thirty big cats, including lions, tigers, cougars and leopards, will soon be traveling 52 miles across Central Florida.


Neighborhoods and developments near the Central Florida Animal Reserve in Cocoa forced the county to change the zoning from agricultural to residential, so the county asked that the facility be moved.


Since then, the organization has raised about $1.3 million to build a new facility in St. Cloud

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NEWSLINK: Sunderbans now happy hunting ground for tigers; numbers go up

For the second year in a row, tiger population in the Indian Sunderbans has shown an increase. This year, a camera-trap exercise has captured at least six more tigers in the mangroves.
According to a forester associated with the exercise, 87 unique frames were captured by the camera traps in the mangroves, including the tiger reserve area and the South 24-Parganas forest division. The count was 81 last year. The latest exercise was conducted between December 2016 and June this year.

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NEWSLINK: Experts fear at least 150 black panthers prowl the streets of Britain

Cryptozoologist Jonathan Downes, 57, has been tracking the wild beasts for decades.

He reckons there are dozens of killer pumas, panthers, lynx and wildcats roaming the UK.
Panther filmed stalking man at zoo before pouncing


It comes after we revealed how Emma Adam was left paralysed with fear when she came face-to-face with a black panther this week.


Mr Downes believes her sighting in Leicestershire is just the tip of the iceberg. He believes there could be 150 big cats such as panthers on the loose in Britain at any one time.

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NEWSLINK: Big drop in global cheetah numbers

Cheetah numbers are in steady decline; in 1975 there were 14,000 wild cheetahs, today the number hovers just over 7,000. New data suggests the numbers may fall by 53 percent over the next 15 years. This comes from Panthera, the global wild cat conservation organization. Speaking with National Geographic, the head of the organization, Luke Hunter sets out what this means: "That’s a very active decline, and you have to really step in and act to address that."

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NEWSLINK: Big Cat Rescue welcomes 3 new exotic rescues

Big Cat Rescue took in three new exotic cats rescued from an illegal breeder Tuesday morning.


According to Big Cat Rescue, the two Caracals and one African Serval were owned by an illegal breeder of hybrid cats in Ohio. When the Ohio Department of Agriculture discovered the cats, the owner willingly surrendered them. But, the three exotic cats needed a home.


ODA reached out to Big Cat Rescue in Tampa to see if they would take the cats in. Big Cat Rescue happily accepted the cats and will be their permanent home.


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NEWSLINK: Anjanapura residents in fear after leopard attacks dog

Residents staying in Anjanapura, off Kanakapura Road, have been complaining about leopard sightings. On Wednesday, the big cat turned up again, triggering panic among residents at BDA Layout (Ist Block) in Anjanapur off Kanakapura Road. According to residents, the leopard attacked a dog, injuring it seriously after dusk on Wednesday.

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SIGHTING, UK: Jogger reports seeing panther on Alban Way

Alistair Divall, of Old London Road, saw what he believed to be a panther while he was out jogging, at around 9.30am.

He said: “It was about 10 or 15 feet in front of me, moving slowly, and then it turned and looked at me briefly.

“It disappeared completely and there were people down at the bottom with their dogs.”
Alistair, who is employed as a TV presenter and broadcaster, has worked at Paradise Wildlife Park, where he said he learned more about big cats.

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NEWSLINK: ABQ BioPark snow leopard Kachina dies

Kachina, a 14-year-old snow leopard and a resident of the ABQ BioPark Zoo since 2003, died Thursday, according to the zoo’s Facebook page.


She was diagnosed last January with a tumor that was inoperable because of its proximity to her neck and throat.

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VIDEO: 'Big cat' blamed for cougar-like attack on Queensland horse

Bizarre footage has emerged of a horse, which appears to have been attacked by a large cat in Gympie.


The video, uploaded to YouTube by Australian-based big cat research group PantherPeople, shows a horse with giant scratch marks on its back.

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ARTICLE: How to Save the Jaguars? Turn the Locals From Foe to Friend

Ricardo Moreno loves cats. At 14 years old, he would follow around his pet cat and study its behavior—much to his mother’s displeasure.

Now, the Panamanian has moved onto bigger things: Saving the Americas' biggest feline, the jaguar.

The big cats once roamed over nearly nine million square kilometers, from the southern mountains of Argentina to the Grand Canyon in Arizona. But decades of deforestation and hunting have drastically shrunk its habitat and eliminated 40 percent of the historic population. The International Union for Conservation of Nature lists the jaguar as near threatened to extinction; the species is already gone from Uruguay and Ecuador.

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NEWSLINK: Big cats increase, but not their habitat size

The steady increase in tiger population in the State yet again underlines the need to expand the tiger habitat lest it results in more tiger-human conflicts in the periphery of national parks.


This came to the fore early this year in the Nagarahole belt with a spate of tiger deaths, while five human deaths were reported from the Bandipur fringes during December-January in 2013-14.


Nagarahole park director Manikandan hinted at space crunch to accommodate the growing tiger population in Nagarahole. “The park has a boundary of 220 km of which 150 km has human habitation and there is no buffer forest on the eastern and western boundary of the national park which adjoins villages,” he added.

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ARTICLE: Cats Domesticated Themselves, Ancient DNA Shows

In true feline form, cats took their time deciding whether to jump into humans’ laps.

In a new comprehensive study of the spread of domesticated cats, DNA analysis suggests that cats lived for thousands of years alongside humans before they were domesticated. During that time, their genes have changed little from those of wildcats, apart from picking up one recent tweak: the distinctive stripes and dots of the tabby cat.

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ARTICLE: There's nothing more terrifying to the mountain lion than the voice of a 'super-predator'

There is one predator that sends mountain lions running, even if they are in the middle of feasting on a fresh kill.


Hearing the human voice is enough to make the cats drop what they're doing and run as fast as they can, according to a study published in the Proceedings of the Royal Society B. Humans are the only 'super-predator' to have this effect on the big cats.

Scientists set up a system with motion-sensitive cameras placed near the sites where mountain lions – also known as pumas – would drag their prey to eat them. When the cameras were triggered by one of the cats, it would play either the sound of a frog or a recording of human speech.

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NEWSLINK: Ringling’s big cats could be headed for a circus overseas

Ringling Bros. and Barnum & Bailey Circus has closed, but it still needs to find new homes for some of its animals. Ringling’s recent bid to export protected lions, tigers, and a leopard to a German circus reveals deep flaws in the way the Endangered Species Act (ESA) is being enforced by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service (FWS). All of these animals are imperiled in the wild and, as such, are supposed to be protected by the ESA.

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NEWSLINK: Can at least this tiger be saved in Nelwai?

Another tiger has entered forests of Nelwai, may be in search of food and safe shelter. But, it has literally braved the threat of poaching as well. A three-year-old male tiger, which had migrated from Maharashtra, ended up being electrocuted in the similar wild, seven months ago. The question arises now is: “Can forest officials save this big cat, at least?”

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NEWSLINK: Tiger pushes son out of reserve’s core area

It’s a turf war in the Sariska tiger reserve.


Twelve years ago, poachers had wiped Sariska clean of the big cats. Now, a total of 14 tigers mean that the national park with an overall area of about 800 sq km and a core area of approximately 500 sq km may be turning into a bit of a squeeze for the striped cats.


In the latest territorial fight in Sariska, tiger ST-6 has made sure that his son ST-13 has not entered his territory for the last eight months.

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NEWSLINK: Tiger population set to increase in Kaziranga National Park

Latest estimates show that there are 104 tigers in the Kaziranga National Park and Burachapori, about 250 km from here. In 2014, there were 83 tigers in Kaziranga.


Both the parks are located within the sprawling Kaziranga Tiger Reserve, spread over an area of 860sq km.The Kaziranga Park is 430 sq km.While 95 adult tigers were found in Kaziranga, two adult big cats were found in Burchapori along with cubs.


With 104 tigers, the big cat density in Kaziranga has been found to be 21 tigers per 100 sq km.

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NEWSLINK: Hamerton Zoo killer big cat 'was rare Malayan tiger'

Zoo bosses say a big cat that killed its keeper was a rare male Malayan tiger.


Rosa King, 33, died at Hamerton Zoo Park in Cambridgeshire on 29 May when she and the tiger, which the zoo said was called Cicip, entered an enclosure.


The zoo, which has been shut since the attack, is due to reopen on Friday.


It comes after it passed a licence and public safety inspection by Huntingdonshire Council.


The park's director Andrew Swales said the decision to reopen had been taken "in consultation with the police, our staff and Rosa's family".

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SIGHTING, UK: Muscular big cat spotted bounding across road near St Albans

Another witness has come forward to report glimpsing a bounding big cat just outside St Albans.

Valerie Rodrigues was on her way back from Redbourn at about 8.30pm on June 6 when she spotted an animal dart out into the road in front of her car.

At first she dismissed it as a fox - it was a “gingery, sandy colour” she said, a similar size, and trotting - but as the car got closer it started to bound away.

She is now “absolutely sure” it was feline: “It was definitely a cat in the way it moved, in its well-defined muscles in its legs.

“Cats don’t run like dogs or foxes, they are more arched in their backs. I don’t doubt it was the cat.

“If it hadn’t run I might not have quite realised what it was.”

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NEWSLINK: In a first, SGNP installs CCTV in animal enclosure

To ensure monitoring of the big cats kept in captivity at Sanjay Gandhi National Park (SGNP), forest department for the first time has decided to install CCTV camera's inside the animal enclosures. Chief Conservator of Forest (CCF) and Director of SGNP, Anwar Ahmed informed that the idea behind this was to ensure that not only the activities of animals can be watched from any location but also prior recorded footages can be accessed in case any animal is sick or found dead.

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VIDEO: Using just a smartphone to track endangered species

Drones and smartphones are being used to monitor — and hopefully save — endangered species. Through a project called ConservationFIT, a team of wildlife conservationists from Duke University and the nonprofit WildTrack, are developing algorithms and utilizing drones to analyze footprints and monitor animal movements from the air.

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SIGHTING, UK: The Norfolk Puma spotted at Congham

Norfolk boasts the UK record for big cat sightings with more people than anywhere else in the country reporting seeing cats as large as leopards, panthers and jaguars loping through the county’s countryside, villages, towns and even the city centre of Norwich.


It would be easy, though, to take the sighting of a big cat by customers and staff at a Congham watering hole The Anvil with a pinch of salt and a slice of lemon.

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PHOTOS: Indonesian man has been friends with tiger for 10 years

About 10 years ago, a Muslim School in Malang, Indonesia, received a special donation. It was a three-month-old tigress that its owner had given up on. The school gladly accepted the cub and assigned one of the students to look after her. Abdullah Sholeh became the cat’s nanny, and then best friends. “Sometimes when I am not home, she will always look for me. It is because of this reason that I stick around her a lot. At times I sleep with her in the cage,” says Sholeh, now 25-years-old.

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ARTICLE/VIDEO: The “Lion Whisperer” Thinks Safari Parks Are Doing More Harm Than Good

Kevin Richardson, the man who is considered the Lion Whisperer has harsh words for safari parks that condone interactions with big cats and tourists.


His words sting especially after the tragic death of a tiger handler at Hamerton Zoo this past week. He claims that Safari parks are merely contributing to the illegal capture of big cats and not doing much for conservation.


“Today’s lion cub becomes tomorrow’s trophy, and the unsuspecting tourists have blood on their hands. The tourists have been hoodwinked into believing that their contribution of funds is going into lion conservation,” he told the Daily Mail.

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NEWSLINK: City youngsters fight for the big cat’s survival

What can be more ironical than the fact that eight tigers have died around the Tiger Capital of India in the last five months. Two of them lost their lives thanks to unscrupulous poachers and rest of them died due to illness, dehydration or territorial fights. Authorities have promised to take action, but city youngsters are not ready to wait and watch, sitting at the sidelines and allow more precious animals to die.

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NEWSLINK: India to get new tiger hubs, rise in big cat population expected

For many tiger lovers wandering across India's 50-odd national parks to get a glimpse of the majestic big cats without success, there is good news. Next opening of the park gates may bring to you a louder roar of the felines.


If the National Tiger Conservation Authority (NTCA), the apex body formulating policies for the conservation of big cats, is to be believed, then the next tiger census due in 2018 is set to show a "significant rise".

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NEWSLINK: Tiny Orang roars on tiger density

Orang, the tiger reserve in Assam with the smallest core among 50 nationally protected areas, has presented wildlife scientists doing a census with a surprise: a high density of 28 big cats.


The count was revealed during phase IV of the all-India tiger estimation programme of the National Tiger Conservation Authority (NTCA).


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NEWSLINK: Tiger images thrill surveyors

The Rajaji Tiger Reserve (RTR) management is thrilled with the overwhelming results of the recent exercise to count the big cat through camera traps (remote controlled cameras).


The exercise has yielded a rich haul of photographs, indicating a surge inthe park’s tiger population, spread across Dehradun, Haridwar and Pauri districts of Uttarakhand.


The RTR authorities carried out an internal tiger census in February this year. A total of 290 cameras were installed in different parts of the park.

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NEWSLINK: Lions rescued from circuses found mutilated in big cat sanctuary

The bodies of two lions have been found brutally mutilated at a sanctuary in South Africa's northern Limpopo province. The animals, which reportedly had their heads, skin, tails and feet removed in the attack had been rescued from circuses in South America last year.
It is suspected that the lions’ limbs were taken for use in witchcraft ceremonies.

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ARTICLE: Kamloops Conservation Officers use dogs to limit cougar-human interactions

In British Columbia, Cougars are considered an apex predator, and certainly have the strength to take down prey as big as elk, and moose. Quite often, the big cats are maligned when it comes to interaction with people, and the domestic animals and livestock we keep; one local Conservation Officer is hoping to chance the perception of cougars in the wild, as well as show CFJC Today one of the many tools the service has when it comes to dealing with big cats.

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NEWSLINK: Reports of 'big cat' sightings in Australia are mounting

A hunter of 35 years has reported a sighting of a large black cat while hunting at night in Langshaw.


Yesterday, a professional hunter with decades of experience hunting in Australia and New Zealand reported to The Gympie Times he had definitively seen the large cat five months ago.


The man, who has chosen not to be named, carries out professional animal control.


He said he spotted a large black cat while hunting at night.


"I was out between Langshaw and Amamoor Creek," he said.

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NEWSLINK: Animal census surprises Forest Department officials

It may sound awkward, but it is true. This is one tiger resort that doesn’t have the big cat prowling around. The Phase-IV census of wild animals which concluded on Wednesday did not record the movement of a single tiger in Kawal Tiger Reserve (KTR) of Jannaram.


This has astonished many, particularly environmental activists. However, officials of the Forest Department said that the animal could be living somewhere in the facility spread over Adilabad, Nirmal, Mancherial and Kumram Bheem Asifabad districts.

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NEWSLINK: Undercover tourists capture footage of big cats being tortured for 'selfies'

Endlessly jabbed with metal sticks as visitors pose with them for pictures - for some of these tigers, this is the grim reality of everyday life.


Undercover tourists have secretly filmed two controversial parks in Thailand for a new BBC documentary that lifts the lid on animal exploitation abroad.

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NEWSLINK: State ready to translocate tigers to western half of Rajaji Tiger Reserve

After months of deliberation and careful planning, the state forest department is all set to translocate tigers to the western part of Rajaji Tiger Reserve (RTR) which is home to two lone tigresses. The National Tiger Conservation Authority (NTCA) has granted permission for five tigers for the translocation project.


The western part of RTR is separated from the eastern half by a narrow corridor that is threatened by the perpetual construction of flyovers, widening highways and new townships.

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ARTICLE: South Africa's 'lion whisperer' gets up close with big cats

The male lion brushes through the tall grass and strides into a clearing in a South African wildlife sanctuary. A man beckons the big cat with purring sounds. The lion, Bayetsi, responds with a gentle 
growl and caresses Kevin Richardson, popularly known as the "lion whisperer," with its mane.

Richardson hopes his hands-on stunts with lions will highlight the plight of the African predator, whose numbers have dwindled. It also thrusts him into a sensitive debate about human interaction with lions; some conservationists say Richardson's message is sound and sincere, but note the limits of what he can do to address big-picture problems facing the vulnerable species.

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PHOTOS: Full Speed Cheetahs at Animal Ark Sanctuary

The Animal Ark Cheetah 500 offers guests the opportunity to see the sanctuary’s two cheetahs running at full speed and off leash. It was hosted Sunday, May 28 at the wildlife sanctuary.


The event kicked off with a short educational session about cheetahs. Rachel Smith, an animal keeper and educator, talked about the sanctuary’s cheetahs. She first explained that while most big cats will fight to defend their food, cheetahs, with their light frame, will run from a threat. A rake smacking the ground or loud stomp could be all it takes to stop a cheetah from misbehaving.

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