The staff of Land of the Leopard have installed over 30 new camera traps, two per station, during an inspection tour of the park in early 2018. The network of trail cameras in the southwest of the Primorye Territory now has around 400 automatic cameras at 200 stations and is the largest in Russia.

The leopard population and leopard population density are increasing, forcing the spotted cat to spread out to new territories. Several new animals whose image has not been captured by trail cameras even when they were cubs are recorded every year. The network of trail cameras in the national park is being increased to improve the possibility of assessing the real number of Far Eastern leopards in the park.

“The majority of new trail cameras have been installed beyond the engineering facilities on the border with China. Cameras there often capture the images of cats that live in both countries, some of which have not been added to the park’s database of animals. The data provided by the new cameras will be analysed in a few months,” said Alexei Titov, a research engineer from the science department of Land of the Leopard.

Wildlife monitoring using camera traps began at the national park back in 2013, and the network of cameras now covers 360,000 hectares. The cameras are inspected every year. At the moment, park research department workers are in the process of analysing the data from 2017.