According to recent data, 110 adult Far Eastern leopards live in the wild in Russian protected areas, which shows that the population of the world’s rarest big cat is stable.

Four hundred camera traps installed in Land of the Leopard National Park, its protected zone and the Kedrovaya Pad Nature Reserve provide specialists with terabytes of material from a total area of almost 369,000 hectares. The park employees manually processed over 700,000 photos taken in a year.

Specialists analysed selected photos of leopards by using special software that allows them to identify each animal by its individual spot pattern.

“In addition to 110 adult animals, specialists recorded 16 cubs, but they give a personal ID number and a place in the database only to those leopards who have left their mothers and started an independent life. It is the number of adult leopards that determines the population condition,” said Anna Vitkalova, an employee of Land of the Leopard research department.

There were only about 35 Far Eastern leopards in Russia in the early 21^st century. Land of the Leopard National Park, created in 2012, helped to increase their population.