The World’s Rarest Big Cat Rebounds: Amur Leopards Climb to 130 in Russia

The Amur leopard is often called the rarest big cat on Earth, a ghost of the cold forests where Russia meets China. Wearing a thick, pale-gold coat patterned with bold black rosettes, it is exquisitely adapted to deep snow, with oversized paws that work like natural snowshoes. Yet by the turn of the century, relentless poaching and habitat loss had reduced the wild population to perhaps 25 animals — a number so small that extinction seemed all but inevitable.

That grim outlook has shifted dramatically. Recent monitoring puts the Amur leopard population in Russia at roughly 130 individuals, described by researchers as the highest density of these leopards recorded during a decade of rigorous study. Tracked through a network of more than 200 camera-trap stations, the cats are not only more numerous but are also spreading across the border into China, reclaiming ground in territory they had long vanished from.

“Wearing a thick, pale-gold coat patterned with bold black rosettes, it is exquisitely adapted to deep snow, with oversized paws that work like natural snowshoes.”

The turnaround rests on a foundation laid in 2012, when the Russian government established Land of the Leopard National Park. The reserve encompasses all of the leopard’s known breeding areas and about 72 percent of suitable habitat on the Russian side of the range. Alongside the park came stronger law enforcement against poachers, better management of forest fires, and the recovery of sika deer and other prey species that the leopards depend on for food.

The work has been carried forward by partners including the Wildlife Conservation Society, WWF and Russian government agencies, who continue to monitor the cats and protect their forests. The Amur leopard remains critically endangered, and a population of 130 is still fragile. But for a species that came within a whisker of disappearing, every camera-trap image of a healthy adult — and especially of cubs following their mother through the snow — is a quiet, hopeful sign that this magnificent cat is clawing its way back.