Year Assessed: 2008
Justification
Leopards have a wide range and are locally common in some parts of Africa and tropical Asia. However, they are
declining in large parts of their range due to habitat loss and fragmentation, and hunting for trade and pest control.
These threats may be significant enough that the species could soon qualify for Vulnerable under criterion A.
Geographic Range
The leopard occurs across most of sub-Saharan Africa, as remnant populations in North Africa, and then in the Arabian
peninsula and Sinai/Judean Desert (Egypt/Israel/Jordan), south-western and eastern Turkey, and through Southwest Asia
and the Caucasus into the Himalayan foothills, India, China and the Russian Far East, as well as on the islands of Java
and Sri Lanka (Nowell and Jackson 1996; Sunquist and Sunquist 2002; Hunter et al. in press).
In sub-Saharan Africa, leopards remain widely, albeit now patchily, distributed within historical limits (see Hunter et al. in
press, and references therein). Ray et al. (2005) estimated that leopards have disappeared from at least 36.7% of their
historical range in Africa. The most marked range loss has been in the Sahel belt, as well as in Nigeria and South Africa.
They have been locally extirpated from areas densely populated with people or where habitat conversion is extreme
(Hunter et al. in press). They are likely extinct on Zanzibar, where there have been no confirmed records since 1996
(Hunter et al. in press).
The leopard is an adaptable, widespread species that nonetheless has many threatened subpopulations. While still
numerous and even thriving in some marginal habitats from which other big cats have disappeared in many parts of
sub-Saharan Africa, in North Africa leopards are on the verge of extinction.
There are no reliable continent-wide estimates of population size in Africa, and the most commonly cited estimate of over
700,000 leopards in Africa (Martin and de Meulenaar 1988) is flawed.
Population Trend: Decreasing
Habitat and Ecology
The leopard has the widest habitat tolerance of any Old World felid, ranging from rainforest to desert. In Africa, they are
most successful in woodland, grassland savanna and forest but also occur widely in mountain habitats, coastal scrub,
swampy areas, shrubland, semi-desert and desert. They range from sea level to as much as 4,600 m on Mt Kenya
(Hunter et al. in press). In Southwest and Central Asia, leopards formerly occupied a range of habitats, but now are
confined chiefly to the more remote montane and rugged foothill areas. Through India and Southeast Asia, Leopard are
found in all forest types, from tropical rainforest to the temperate deciduous and alpine coniferous (up to 5,200 m in the
Himalaya), and also occur in dry scrub and grasslands (Nowell and Jackson 1996).
Leopards have extremely catholic diets including more than 90 species in sub-Saharan Africa, ranging from arthropods to
large antelope up to the size of adult male Eland Tragelaphus oryx (Hunter et al. in press). Densities vary with habitat,
prey availability, and degree of threat, from fewer than one per 100 km² to over 30 per 100 km², with highest densities
obtained in protected East and southern African mesic woodland savannas (Hunter et al. in press).
Major Threat(s)
Throughout Africa, the major threats to Leopard are habitat conversion and intense persecution, especially in retribution
for real and perceived livestock loss (Ray et al. 2005). In intact rainforest, the chief threat to Leopards is probably
competition with human hunters for prey; the tremendous volume of wild meat harvests denudes forests of prey and may
drive localized extinctions. Nonetheless, Leopard are somewhat tolerant of habitat conversion, and may persist close to
large human populations provided they have suitable cover and prey (Hunter et al. in press).
Leopard come into conflict with people across their range. A rapidly increasing threat to Leopards is the poisoning of
carcasses targeting carnivores, either as a means of predator control or incidentally.
The impact of trophy hunting on populations is unclear, but may have impacts at the demographic and population level,
especially when females are shot. In Tanzania, which allows only males to be hunted, females comprised 28.6% of 77
trophies shot between 1995 and 1998 (Spong et al. 2000).
Conservation Actions
Included on CITES Appendix I. Legal international traffic is limited largely to exports of skins and hunting trophies under
a CITES Appendix I quota system by 13 African countries (2005 CITES quota is 2,590). Leopards are protected under
national legislation throughout most of their range (Nowell and Jackson 1996). In Africa, although Leopards occur in
numerous protected areas across their range, the majority of the population occurs outside of protected areas,
necessitating a need for improved conflict mitigation measures (including livestock management, conflict resolution)
(Hunter et al. in press).
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IUCN RED LIST OF THREATENED SPECIES
