Leopards are the ultimate survivors. Can they endure these growing challenges?

The state of the world’s leopards inspires hope, with some of the eight subspecies stabilizing or slightly rebounding. But the serious peril of others is causing alarm, according to a new assessment by the world’s leading scientific authority on global extinction.

Though leopards are the most resilient big cat, they have declined by more than 30 percent over the last 22 years—which is three generations. They have disappeared from entire swathes of their historic range and may now be extinct in 26 countries that they formerly roamed. These findings, released on June 27 by the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN), are part of an update to its Red List of Threatened Species. 

IUCN lists leopards as “Vulnerable,” a category given to species facing a high extinction risk due rapid population declines or other factors. But some subspecies are in critical condition. 

Leopards inhabit 62 nations across Africa and Asia, from Senegal’s Atlantic coastline to eastern Siberia. These cats live in every imaginable landscape, from sea level to 17,000 feet: forest, mountains, savanna, desert, jungle, and even Sanjay Gandhi National Park in the center of Mumbai, a city of 21 million people. It’s the widest geographic range of any big cat.

These iconic felids face urgent threats to their survival regardless of where they live. The assessment notes that their numbers have “dramatically reduced due to continued persecution from increased human populations.”

Because leopards are adaptable and secretive, living in places that most wild cats won’t, it’s difficult to evaluate their status.

“People just assume that they're doing well, but the evidence shows that throughout most of their range, they are not,” says Andrew Stein, a leopard expert who headed both this analysis and the previous one in 2016.

This new leopard report mirrors a mostly grim trajectory for big cats worldwide. It’s also bad news for many animals they live beside. With few apex predators, changes cascade throughout increasingly unbalanced ecosystems.

But scientists emphasize that informed, targeted conservation works. The Indian leopard is one example: with greater attention, it was downlisted from Vulnerable to Near Threatened.

Mixed news

This Red List update also evaluated individual subspecies. The results are as different as the locales the cats inhabit.

The Near Threatened Indian leopard is doing comparatively well, with a population of 15,000-plus—the result of increased research and better management. The Sri Lankan leopard is Vulnerable; 777 remain. 

African leopards are also in the Vulnerable category—and rapidly disappearing. However, we don’t know how many mature individuals or healthy breeding populations there are, says Marine Drouilly, a wild cat biologist with the nonprofit Panthera. In some places, it’s unknown if any are left.

The Javan leopard, downlisted from Critically Endangered to Endangered, is still highly imperiled with just 319 remaining. As an island species, there’s little room to expand, so their future depends on management. Over the past five years, they’ve received significant attention, with progress forged in collaborations between governments, conservation groups, leopard scientists, and local communities, says Hariyo (Beebach) Wibisono, a member of the IUCN Cat Specialist Group.

Four subspecies are Critically Endangered, one step from extinction.

The assessment flagged serious concern for the Indochinese leopard. Stein explained why. They are heavily poached, their habitat largely destroyed, and they hang on in empty scraps of forest devoid of prey in four Southeast Asian nations. Stein warned that “we could very easily watch this cat disappear between now and the next assessment. Ten, 15 years ago that would have been unthinkable.”

The Arabian leopard, the smallest subspecies, is also in dire straits: only 70 to 84 mature cats survive. It’s extinct in Saudi Arabia, but the country invested millions in 2019 to bring it back. Breeding and introducing captive-bred cats to the wild is difficult, but recent successes with Iberian lynx and Persian leopards show it’s possible.

The IUCN merged the Amur leopard with the North China subspecies, a decision based on genetic analysis. The Amur leopard has seen dramatic recovery. Protecting habitat and reintroducing deer and wild boar pulled this cat from the brink of extinction.

“In the 2000s, we estimated that between 25 and 35 individuals remained,” says Dale Miquelle, a big cat expert with the nonprofit Wildlife Conservation Society. But they have rebounded. By 2022, more than 100 adult leopards roamed Russia, plus a developing population in China, though it’s not yet a viable population, he says.

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The trajectory of the large Persian leopard is encouraging: they are reappearing in parts of Iran and Iraq where they’d long been absent. While the population is fragile,  there’s hope, says Arash Ghoddousi, a conservation scientist and member of the IUCN Cat Specialist Group.

This cat is the best documented of any subspecies because of a joint initiative by IUCN and Convention on Migratory Species to gather information from experts across its range, from Turkey to the Caucuses. “It set the gold standard for regional work,” Ghoddousi says.

This says a lot about what can happen when people from different regions share a commitment to conservation, Stein notes. “It can lead to collaborations that you never would have thought possible.”

The threats endangering the leopards’ future                                                                 

This assessment shows why there are no blanket statements for leopards. Their status, threats, and level of protection vary widely, and much remains unknown.

Trying to understand the prevalence and whereabouts of a species across two continents requires on-the-ground surveys, mapping, and computer models. But with a nearly three-million-square-mile range, large areas have never been surveyed.

Shrinking habitat, along with diminishing prey and conflict with people, pose the top threats to leopards’ long-term survival, as well as escalating climate change and mushrooming human population.

The scale and speed of habitat loss in many regions is startling.

“We suspect that suitable leopard range has been reduced by more than 30 percent worldwide over its last three generations,” the assessment authors wrote. Leopards lost 11 percent of their confirmed homelands during the past eight years.

Africa took the largest hit. “Crop fields and towns are replacing forests and savannas,” says Drouilly. The assessment noted that human populations will likely double in sub-Saharan Africa by 2050, requiring more land.

But with leopards, there are always exceptions. Territory expanded in India, and the breeding range of leopards in the Russian Far East and Northeast China doubled over two decades. 

Cats need to move to find food, water, a mate, or to establish territory. Human incursions fragment the landscape, isolating populations. This lack of connectivity poses a major threat to African leopards, Drouilly says. Without wildlife corridors and an influx of new genes from neighboring populations, inbreeding creates a questionable future.

It’s already occurring, says Miquelle. “Amur leopards are showing signs of inbreeding, [like] white paws and shortened, kinked tails."

Farms, ranches, and urban sprawl displace leopards and brings them into dangerous proximity to humans. They are exterminated wherever their range overlaps with ranchers and herders. Commercial bushmeat hunting is decimating their prey; hungry cats then kill livestock and owners retaliate.

The international trade in the cat’s spotted pelts, teeth, bones, and claws puts them in the crosshairs. This Red List assessment estimates that poachers can get up to $3,000 for a carcass—and illegal trade of skins and body parts used in cultural and spiritual rituals is rising in Africa.

But leopards face a plethora of threats, from mines, roads, civil unrest and armed conflict to logging, railroads, wildfire, poorly managed trophy hunting, and more.

Stein calls leopards “the ultimate survivors.” They’re agile, strong, highly intelligent; able to camouflage into the shadows; can live anywhere; feed on anything; and live close to people or in remote places. “The fact that we're losing them tells us a lot about the broader challenges we are facing in the world.”

This assessment emphasizes the fact that leopards clearly need more attention to stop their decline and offers a powerful tool to inform decisions and catalyze action to save them.