Sino Russian endeavour to save Amur Leopards

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*http://www.chron.com/disp/story.mpl/ap/world/4519481.html*

*Feb. 1, 2007, 5:43PM*

Russians, Chinese look for Amur leopards

 

 

© 2007 The Associated Press

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MOSCOW — Russian and Chinese conservationists began searching Thursday for

signs of the last remaining Amur leopards in Russia's Far East and adjacent

Chinese border regions, as part of a triennial census of the nearly extinct

cats.

 

The leopards are one of the most endangered species on Earth, with only

around 30 remaining in the wilderness of the Russian Pacific's Primorye

region and across the border in China's northeastern provinces, the World

Wide Fund for Nature said in a statement.

 

The animals and their habitat face encroachment from development, poachers,

logging and other threats, said Dmitry Pikunov, an ecologist with the

Russian Academy of Science.

 

" The condition and quality of its ecosystem in specific places is changing

quickly and unfortunately for these predators not for the best, " he said in

the statement.

 

" It remains to be said that places where large predators like the leopard

and the tiger can have normal lives practically are gone, " he said.

 

Trackers, hunters and animal biologists will spend two weeks across some

1,930 square miles of snowy taiga forests seeking out tracks to determine

how many leopards remain, their gender and their size, the organization

said.

 

The cross-border territory is also home to the endangered Siberian tigers,

also known as the Amur, Manchurian or Ussuri tiger. Slightly more than 400

tigers are believed to survive in the wild, victims also of encroaching

human settlements as well poachers who want hides and bones for use in

traditional Chinese medicine.