One of the top priorities in the protection of rare species in Russia - - along with the Amur tiger belongs to the Far Eastern leopard, whose fate is even more dramatic. The Far Eastern leopard is one the rarest and most beautiful of the cat family. It inhabits an area that long ago broke away from the major part of the species' natural habitat, and there are no more than 4052 individuals alive today.
There are only 10 pure-bred Far Eastern leopards in captivity. When one talks about threats to the existence of one or another species or subspecies, one usually is thinking merely of an approaching catastrophe, But the situation of the Far Eastern leopard can be considered a catastrophe right now, and calls for extraordinary measures.
In the Far Eastern part of Russia the leopard was always overshadowed by its powerful cousin, the tiger, and, in spite of its critical situation, was largely ignored by society and conservation agencies. From the beginning the number of leopards and the area of their natural habitat were much smaller than that of the tigers, and, while over the past 50 years the number of tigers has grown and its natural habitat is being restored, the leopard population has been steadily slirinking, along with the area in which it can be found.
At present, the number of leopards is 10-15 times lower than that of the tiger, and its natural habitat is just a small fraction of that of its feline relative. Over the past 20 years the natural habitat of the leopard has been reduced almost by half. The last refuge of the Far Eastern leopard in Russia is the extreme southern part of the Far East Primorski Krai (Maritime Territory), an area which may be integrated into large-scale economic development projects. All of this requires that the process of saving the leopard and its natural habitat be given special consideration.
From the beginning of the 1970s Russian scientists have repeatedly raised the question of the critical situation of the Far Eastern leopard, and have achieved a certain amount of success. In 1979, the First All-Union Conference on Rare Species of Mammals adopted a resolution creating the Barsovy Zakaznik (Wildlife Refuge) (106,000 hectares), for the protection of the leopard. In 1990 The Far Eastern Chapter of the Academy of Sciences
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drafted a Long-Term Plan for the Protection and Rational Use of the Resources of Primorski Krai until the Year 2005, which was approved by the Regional Congress of People's Deputies in 1992. (Ecological Program). In 1995, a committee for the protection of the Far Eastern leopard was organized in Vladivostok, with the participation of specialists of IUCN - The World Conservation Union. But it was not until the end of 1996 that an international conference on saving the leopard was called in Vladivostok, on the initiative of the World Wildlife Fund and with the financial support of USAID. The conference designed a unified^program of measures to accomplish its goals. A working group for developing a Strategy for Preserving the Far Eastern Leopard in Russia was formed at the conference.
