On 20 September, the village of Slavyanka in the southwest of the Primorye Territory celebrated Leopard Day. The Leopard Keepers festival was held as part of the celebrations. This year the festival was celebrated internationally for the first time: alongside 17 teams from the Khasan and Nadezhdinsky districts of the Primorye Territory it was attended by school pupils from Wang Chung in the Jilin Province, China.

This year the participants in the festival had a good reason to celebrate: upon summing up the results of photo registration in August 2015, Russian and Chinese researchers determined that there are at least 80 Far Eastern leopards in the world. A comparison of photos revealed that many wild cats have “dual citizenship,” and were registered by camera traps both in Russia and China.

The festival opened with a procession of fancy-dress columns followed by other performances. Guests of the festival were able to visit a fair of hand-made souvenirs and workshops and take part in contests. Traditional leopard make-up was available for all those who were interested. The holiday was crowned with a flashmob, with school pupils forming a figure of a leopard with orange, black and white balloons. On command they synchronously released the balloons and the skies over the main square of Slavyanka were painted with the colors of the world’s rarest wild cat, the Far Eastern leopard.

The celebrations were organised by the Education Department of the Khasan and Nadezhdinsky regions of the Primorye Territory, Land of the Leopard National Park, Far Eastern Leopards non-profit organisation and the WWF.