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Amur Leapord


Scorcher
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Please go to yahoo and read the story about the killing of one of the last Amur leapards. I don't know how to post links. This kind of thing infuriates me. I've never understood killing an animal simply for being what it was. This situation is even more disgusting because it was killed on April 15th or 16th and left dead. The stupid jerk that killed it didn't even take it for a trophy. Hunters like this one serve no purpose other than to anihilate what future genrations might enjoy. They devalue the diversity of what is nature. Why do people feel the urge to destroy living creatures for simply being what evolution decides what they will be?

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What if it was killing his livestock which he uses to feed his family?

 

 

This is a good point and one that those of us who live in suburbia don't think about. If this were the situation I would think that responsible environmentalists in that country, when it gets down to 7 females would have recognized the situation and dealt with it, instead of waiting to see what happens. It's just another example of proactive vs reactive.

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"Leopard murder can only be provoked by cowardice or stupidity, in this case most likely by both," Pavel Fomenko, WWF's biodiversity coordinator in Russia's Far East said in a statement.

 

Biodiversity coordinator? What in the Seven Hells is a Biodiversity coordinator?

 

And I can think of a few reaosn to kill a leopard other than cowardice or stupidity. Of course, if the leopard happened to be attacking a person, Mr. Fomenko would probably blame the human for invading its environment.

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"Leopard murder can only be provoked by cowardice or stupidity, in this case most likely by both," Pavel Fomenko, WWF's biodiversity coordinator in Russia's Far East said in a statement.

 

Biodiversity coordinator? What in the Seven Hells is a Biodiversity coordinator?

 

And I can think of a few reaosn to kill a leopard other than cowardice or stupidity. Of course, if the leopard happened to be attacking a person, Mr. Fomenko would probably blame the human for invading its environment.

 

 

This is a good point as well as some others. If the Amur Leapard was attacking livestock or a human being then it was justified. If it was tracked down into it's natural habitat and destroyed then it was wrong. Destroying a creature for simply living in it's own environment is wrong!

Edited by Scorcher
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"Leopard murder can only be provoked by cowardice or stupidity, in this case most likely by both," Pavel Fomenko, WWF's biodiversity coordinator in Russia's Far East said in a statement.

 

Biodiversity coordinator? What in the Seven Hells is a Biodiversity coordinator?

 

And I can think of a few reaosn to kill a leopard other than cowardice or stupidity. Of course, if the leopard happened to be attacking a person, Mr. Fomenko would probably blame the human for invading its environment.

 

 

 

You seem to have read the article, yet you ignored this portion - "Amur leopards have not been know to attack humans."

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The Amur leopard is particularly vulnerable in the Russian Far East, where farmers raise captive deer for

human consumption and to produce antlers for the Asian medicine market. Deer are the natural predatory

preference for leopards, and in absence of wild prey, leopards venture into the deer farms in search of

food. Owners of these farms are quick to protect their investment by eliminating leopards attacking their

stock. Presently, the Amur leopard’s most immediate threat comes from such retaliatory or preventive

killing.

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3.1 Historic and present status of the Amur leopard

 

The Amur leopard is the most northerly leopard of the 8 leopard subspecies. Its former range included

South Sikhote Alin, Korea and large parts of China where it connected with other leopard subspecies to

the west and south. The population became isolated from other subspecies in China during the previous

century. The Amur leopard was already very rare when it received full protection in Russia in the late

sixties (although animals continued to be caught for zoos). In the seventies the Russian population had

fragmented into 3 separate, small populations. Two of them blinked out and at present the only remaining

population is that of SW Primorye (the population inhabits an area of approximately 3000 square

kilometres along the borders with China and North Korea)xxi. This process of fragmentation and

subsequent local extinction (illustrated in figure 8) is in fact a typical extinction pattern of a (sub)species.

A positive aspect is, however, that the remaining population in SW Primorye appears to have been stable during 30 years at a level of 30 – 50 leopards

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Monitoring results show that tiger numbers in SW Primorye increased substantially in recent years: tiger

population estimates for SW Primorye rose from from 2-3 in the early seventies to 16-20 in 2003xlvi. The

relations and inter-species competition between Amur tigers and leopards are still poorly understood and

as a result the impact of this increase on the Amur leopard population is not exactly known. It is certain

that tigers and leopards shared the forests in the south of Primorski Krai when Russian settlers arrived in

the nineteenth century, but the relations and competition between tigers and leopards may since have

changed due to human factors. An indication that this may be the case is that leopards disappeared from

Sikhote Alin when at the same time the tiger made a spectacular come back in the southern part of

Sikhote Alin where tigers had become locally extinct. Leopards were reportedly relatively common in

some parts in the south of Sikhote Alin (such as the Ussurisk zapavednik) previous to the return of tigers

in the sixties and seventies of the previous century.

 

In India it has been observed that leopards become rare in areas where tigers reach high densities. In

many reserves where tigers reached high densities in the well protected core area after protection

improved in the seventies, leopards only manage to survive in the fringes, where the density of large

ungulates is low (often due to competition with cattle and goats), and the habitat is degraded due to

livestock grazing and collection of fire-wood. These leopards live in close proximity to people, and

livestock (e.g. dogs and goats) often forms their staple diet.

 

The above can be summed up as follows. The increase in tiger numbers indicates that their are a number

of favourable conditions for tigers in SW Primorye from which leopards may benefit as well. However, the

increase of tigers in itself is “bad news” for leopards, although the the extent and nature of the negative

impact on the leopard population remains unknown.

 

Only direct threats that play a role for both Amur tigers and Amur leopards are presented in figure 14.

As a result, two threats that are particular for the leopard are not included. The most striking one is the

increase of Amur tiger numbers in SW Primorye.

Edited by Bronco Billy
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The article is short on detail but it's written in a fashion that indicates that it was a poaching incident. I don't know, maybe there wasn't a farm in the vicinity.

 

Right, cause poachers just leave the dead animals.

 

I kill pests all the time, think nothing of it, and leave their remains for nature to take care of. Beavers and squirrels mainly.

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Right, cause poachers just leave the dead animals.

 

I kill pests all the time, think nothing of it, and leave their remains for nature to take care of. Beavers and squirrels mainly.

 

 

The articles that I posted snippets from said that the poaching usually occurs as the leopards are trying to raid the domestic herds. That's probably why the cat was beaten to death and left intact.

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