A seminar including a workshop on post-mortem examinations of wild animals was held at Land of the Leopard National Park. The seminar is designed to help specialists establish what diseases Far Eastern leopards and Amur tigers could get from contacting contagious animals.

The seminar has taught the national park staff together with their colleagues from other organisations post-mortem examination techniques.  The scientists carried out autopsies of small mammals that died either from old age or in road accidents, described their anatomical features and selected biological materials for special laboratory research.

“These examinations are crucial for the fundamental research and also important for a complex approach to the conservation of rare species,” said Yekaterina Blidchenko, Land of the Leopard researcher and zoologist at the Tiger Centre. “It is important to understand which diseases there could be in the national park, what their dynamics are and how we could prevent dangerous pandemics from taking place. This research will help us identify the causes of the death of an animal.”

Scientists have been collecting data about dead animals in the national park since 2013. Autopsies on Far Eastern leopards and Amur tigers which were no longer alive help estimate the health risks for the wild cats in contactless studies of the animals.