Scientists issue grave warning of subspecies’ impending planetary extinction without immediate conservation funding and action in its last two remaining strongholds
Media contacts: Susie Weller Sheppard, 347-446-9904, sweller@panthera.org
New York, NY – In devastating and unexpected news for the leopard, a study from Panthera, the global wild cat conservation organization, in collaboration with Oxford University’s WildCRU, has found that the Critically Endangered Indochinese leopard is now functionally extinct in Cambodia. Published by Biological Conservation, the study’s findings additionally signal the disappearance of the subspecies from all of eastern Indochina (i.e., Cambodia, Laos and Vietnam). The leopard was last recorded in Laos in 2004 and in Vietnam in the early 2000s.
Scientists are now issuing a grave warning of the Indochinese leopard’s impending extinction from the planet without immediate conservation funding and action in its remaining two strongholds in peninsular Malaysia and the Northern Tenasserim Forest Complex on the Thailand-Myanmar border. A lack of funding and competing species conservation priorities have largely prevented implementation of initiatives specifically targeting recovery and growth of the last Indochinese leopards.
The study involved a survey of two protected areas within Cambodia’s Eastern Plains Landscape and an aggregation of data from seven camera trap surveys conducted from 2009-2019. Alarmingly, scientists found the leopard population declined by 82% over 11 years, with data suggesting 42% of the population was lost each year. An additional survey in 2021 failed to detect leopard, suggesting the species now is functionally extinct (the population is no longer viable), if not fully extirpated, from the landscape. Over the study period, a drastic increase in human activity was also found, with a 20-fold increase in human activity and a 1,000-fold increase in the encounter rate of lethal traps (e.g., wildlife snare, metal snap traps) despite increases in law enforcement efforts.
Panthera Leopard Conservation Scientist and lead author, Dr. Susana Rostro-García, stated, “While law enforcement momentum increased over the last decade, it was insufficient to prevent the leopard from vanishing from this priority site. Now is the time to band together in effectively protecting remaining Indochinese leopard populations, and forging long-term proactive efforts that address the drivers of snaring, including invaluable community partnerships, education campaigns, and programs that reduce consumption of wildlife meat and products by the general public.”
Rostro-García continued, “Without the global community’s injection of expeditious resources to prevent the Indochinese leopard from disappearing in the last two remaining strongholds, we will lose this unique subspecies from the planet forever.”
Scientists were alarmed to discover such a precipitous decline in Cambodia’s leopard densities, which occurred in spite of increased law enforcement efforts, including upticks in ranger numbers, patrol distances and snare removals. An absolutely unprecedented level of poaching is to blame, with an almost inconceivable 12 million snares estimated to be present in eastern Indochina. Snaring levels in the study area in Cambodia were estimated to have increased by at least two levels of magnitude during the 13-year period, driven by increases in wild meat demand and illegal logging, an insatiable illegal wildlife trade, rapid economic growth and infrastructure development.
Unlike other regions of the world, law enforcement advances alone are unlikely to prevent the proliferation of snaring and further wildlife losses in Cambodia, Laos and Vietnam. Additional strategies at the provincial, regional and national levels are desperately needed to address the region’s snaring crisis, including long-term, proactive conservation education and behavior change campaigns to reduce consumption of wildlife meat and products; and systemic judicial reforms, including implementation of wildlife crime prosecutions and convictions.
Panthera Leopard Program Director, Dr. Gareth Mann, stated, “It is disheartening to see the long-overlooked leopard follow the same fate of the tiger in Cambodia, Laos and Vietnam. Just as Indochina now serves as ground zero for tiger poaching and conservation, it is also where the global and conservation community must fully invest our efforts to save the leopard, hand-in-hand with the governments of Thailand, Malaysia and Myanmar.”
Cambodia’s loss of leopards is attributed to widespread poaching for the illegal wildlife trade and bushmeat hunting, involving the setting of thousands of wire snares in wild landscapes. Poaching in the region is particularly driven by a high demand for wild meat, which is considered to be a delicacy or status symbol of middle and upper-class urban consumers. Surveys found an estimated 83% of rural Cambodians harvest wild meat at least once a year.
Moving forward, Panthera, the government of Thailand and other partners will initiate a study of the status of leopards and clouded leopards in Thailand that will outline what conservation actions are required for the species’ recovery.
The Indochinese leopard is one of seven subspecies found in Asia, while one subspecies is found in Africa. In contrast to all other mainland leopard subspecies throughout the world, the Indochinese leopard is unique in that a large percentage of remaining individuals are melanistic, including nearly all individuals in the Malay Peninsula.
Historically found throughout all of Indochina, the Indochinese leopard has lost 95% of its range. Along with bushmeat hunting and poaching for the illegal wildlife trade, habitat loss, prey decline, and conflict with people are to blame for this loss, creating a deadly cocktail of threats facing leopards in Asia, and around the globe. Although considered the most persecuted wild cat in the world, the leopard species as a whole is listed as ‘Vulnerable’ on the IUCN Red List of Threatened Species, while the Indochinese leopard subspecies is classified as ‘Critically Endangered.’
The loss of Indochinese leopards in Cambodia comes just after the publication of a grim report on the planet’s wildlife, which claims that almost half the planet’s species are experiencing rapid population declines due to habitat loss and climate change.
About Panthera
Panthera, founded in 2006, is devoted exclusively to preserving wild cats and their critical role in the world’s ecosystems. Panthera’s team of leading biologists, law enforcement experts and wild cat advocates develop innovative strategies based on the best available science to protect cheetahs, jaguars, leopards, lions, pumas, snow leopards, tigers and the 33 small cat species and their vast landscapes. In 39 countries around the world, Panthera works with a wide variety of stakeholders to reduce or eliminate the most pressing threats to wild cats—securing their future, and ours.
About WildCRU (Wildlife Conservation Research Unit)
Oxford University’s Wildlife Conservation Research Unit (WildCRU), founded by Prof. David Macdonald in 1986, is now the foremost university-based center for biodiversity conservation. The mission of the WildCRU is to achieve practical solutions to conservation problems through original research. WildCRU is renowned for its specialisation in behavioural-ecology and conservation of wild carnivores, especially wild cats, for its long-running studies on lion and clouded leopard, and for its training centre, where early-career conservationists, so far from 32 countries, are trained by experts to become leaders in conservation, resulting in a global community of highly skilled and collaborative conservationists.
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© Sebastian Kennerknecht
