A beautiful Russian documentairy video (translated into English) about the Amur Leopard, certainly the leopard species most clearly endagered by the very small number of animals left in the wild (in 1972, it was evaluated that their number was below 40 animals).

more recently, thanks to scientific studies organized by ALTA – Amur Leopard Conservation, it has been shown that their number may be growing very slowly again.

Panthera pardus orientalis Critically Endangered according to the IUCN.

A few pictures of these large and beautiful predators when I could approach them during a recent photo trip to Botswana.

Lion – Copyright (C) Yves Roumazeilles – All rights reserved

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Lion – Copyright (C) Yves Roumazeilles – All rights reserved

Botswana, October 2011.

My other photographs from Botswana are on http://www.redbubble.com/people/roumazeilles

Interpol, the international organization against crime, decided to add another theme to its already existing activities: Defense of the Tiger with the creation of project “Predator” which aims at coordinating police forces, custom forces and local and global organizations for protection of wildlife (essentially in South East Asia).

Thanks to L.Boucher for pointing me to the news.

A very nice documentary video from France 2 (in French, but with very nice pictures), about the Tiger (le tigre du Bengale) as can be found in South West of Nepal, in Terai.

Most of the video has been shot in Chitwan National Park and Bardia National Park.

When your safari guide tells you not to go outside of your tent at night, you should always respect this advice. Night is the right time for predators like lions to hunt. Most accidents in Tanzania happen in the last hours of the day or the beginning of the night.

This is shown in the peak appearing on the right of the graph I borrowed from a scientific study titled “Fear of Darkness, the Full Moon and the Nocturnal Ecology of African Lions” and published in Plos One by Craig Packer, Alexandra Swanson, Dennis Ikanda and Hadas Kushnir.

They have looked at lion-involved accidents in Tanzania statistics. They have drawn a few conclusions:

• Fear of darkness is there for a reason.
• Attack rates double during the 10 days following a full Moon.
• North Tanzania is a lot safer.
• Lions are dangerous.
• Human beings are not well equipped to fight one or more lions.

OK, I know this is an ad for a car, but it’s the rare occasion where you can see the (natural) hybrid of a lion and a buffalo.

Kevin Richardson is a friend of animals who succeeded in doing things that few people would dare to try: Be completely admitted inside a lion’s den, inside a group of big cats. These animals do not usually play with human beings, but they are highly social animals and this is what Kevin Richardson used to have them accept him – through sobmission and game.

Honnestly, even understanding the rules which allow to reach this point, even firmly convinced by the scientific bases of this approach to inter-species contacts, I would not try it.

As a demonstration, here are a few videos showing Kevin since he moved from the status of friend of lions to honorary lion (like you could speak of a “honorary citizen”).

I let you admire the other anmials (hyenas, leopards) that also let him approach. But keep in mind that these are really big animals. Look at a male lion size. These are “Big cats”, indeed.

Fortunately, I am referring to a photo-video trap, not hunters’ traps.

The critically endangered Amur leopard (Panthera pardus orientalis) has been well observed by the WWF-financed counting operation in Kedrovaya Pad Nature Reserve and Leopardoviy Federal Wildlife Refuge (Russia). This is very good news since the species is believed to count only about 50 animals in the wild. But the Russian traps appear to have allowed the observation of nothing less than 12 different individuals (instead of the 6 that were believed to live in the area).

Maybe the Amur leopard population is (very slowly) increasing.

The video shows a female and a grown-up cub, which may be a farily good indication that the reproduction may allow a slow recovery in this very small population of Amur leopards.