Trail cameras in Land of the Leopard National Park in the Primorye Territory captured images of an endangered leopardess named Grace with her new offspring. The new photos show the happy mother accompanied by two large cubs. Judging by their size, the cubs are about 12 months old, which means they are almost independent adult predators. At this age, leopards often move around their hunting grounds with their mother and learn hunting skills. After a few months, the cubs will leave their mother to begin adulthood.

“Grace gave birth for the first time in 2014, when she also had two cubs,” said Anna Vitkalova, an employee of the research department in Land of the Leopard. “Since then, the predator has regularly had offspring. We photographed her with new cubs for three years in a row – from 2016 to 2018. Of the ten leopards born to Grace, at least six still live in Land of the Leopard; we spotted them as adults, separate from their mother. They became residents and received their own profiles and identification numbers in our database.”

Images of Grace (Leo 23F in the database) were first captured by trail cameras in 2013. According to scientists, she is about ten years old now. The leopardess was named Grace by schoolchildren from an environmental movement, the Nadezhdinsky District Organisation of the Russian Green League.