VLADIVOSTOK, May 19. /TASS/. A leopard ‘baby boom’ has been registered in the Land of the Leopard national park in Russia’s Far Eastern Primorye region, where endangered Amur leopards live.
Alone in 2015 and this year, trail cameras installed in the park have fixed 16 leopard cubs, which is almost three times as much as in 2014, when only six leopard cubs were born, national park’s chief PR manager Ivan Rakov told Tass.
"The fixed cubs are offspring of eight Far Eastern (Amur) leopards," he said, noting that all leopard cubs looked healthy. Queen Borte, getting this name last year from famous American actor and producer Steven Seagal, has turned out to be the most productive, giving birth to three cubs.
The Far Eastern leopard is the rarest among leopards. In Russia, they are natives only to the southwest of Primorye region. The national park Land of Leopard covering an area of 262,000 hectares was set up in the region to protect the endangered species. More than 300 trail cameras monitor them round-the-clock. Every living in Russia leopard has its own number in the catalog, and scientists closely monitor them.
Due to effort Russian ecologists to conserve their population, the population or predators doubled in three years - from 35 to 70 cats, according to last year’s sensus.