Leopard Languishes in Shadow of Tiger

VLADIVOSTOK, Russia — Like the whale and the panda, Russia’s endangered Siberian tiger has captured the world’s conscience, serving as a lucrative poster animal for conservation groups and inspiring stacks of bumper stickers and magazine articles.

Meanwhile, the tiger’s spotted cousin is slipping toward extinction in silence.

The Far Eastern leopard, native to the Russian Far East region of Primorye, is hanging on, but just barely. Only 20 to 24 of the animals remain in Russia, according to a recent census conducted by Russian scientists in cooperation with the Hornocker Wildlife Research Institute. A 1973 census put their number between 38 and 46.

In a distinctive coat of yellow with black spots, the Far Eastern leopard ranges over a small territory of 2,170 square miles on the southernmost tip of Russia’s Pacific coast. The animal’s range is broken up by fences along the North Korean and Chinese borders.

Small populations of leopards believed to survive in those countries could hold the key to survival. Officials say there are about 15 leopards in China, but there is no information on how many exist in North Korea.

In Russia, forest fires and poachers are reducing the number of the leopards’ prey, causing the cats’ birth rate to plummet. Birth rates today are about a quarter of what they were in the 1970s.

But the international conservation community has largely ignored the Far Eastern leopard’s plight. International attempts to study the leopard have been limited to an 18-month radio-collar tracking project coordinated by the Hornocker Institute, which is based at the University of Idaho.

Even that relatively modest project has been a struggle, said Dale Miquelle, Hornocker’s Russian Far East project coordinator.

The institute has launched a polished publicity campaign for its Siberian Tiger Project, including posters of actor Bruce Willis playing with a tiger cub. But it had a hard time raising approximately $80,000 a year for the leopard-tracking project, Miquelle said.

Leopard populations are thriving, or at least stable, in other parts of the world, and the cat is not perceived as highly endangered, making it difficult to generate interest in the Far Eastern leopard, Miquelle said.

Russian officials have other explanations, mainly that international conservation groups have favored Russia’s tiger over the more endangered leopard because the tiger is more likely to yield a success story.

Last year, a highly publicized census released by the World Wildlife Fund pegged the Siberian tiger’s population at about 430--an encouraging comeback from levels of around 250 in 1985.

“A lot of people have appeared in Russia who need not the tiger, but the tiger problem. . . . They want to hype the situation because the tiger problem feeds them,” said Victor Gaponov, a local natural resources official.

Whatever the explanation, the Far Eastern leopard’s fate has been left largely to the efforts of Primorye’s impoverished wildlife reserve network.

Primorye can boast that it has set aside 7.3% of its total land as protected or semi-protected reserves, the highest rate in Russia. But reserves like Kedrovaya Pad Zapovednik, a 44,188-acre tract that is home to at least four leopards, are scarcely able to cover ranger salaries of about $150 a month.

In spring and summer, rangers are as busy with the potato plots that help keep their families going as they are with leopard conservation. Worse, officials worry, the rangers’ paltry salaries may leave them open to temptation from poachers.

“It leaves the person in the field with two choices,” said Dmitry Pikynov, a wildlife official. “To become part of the problem and have a lot of friends who are willing to pay to hunt, or to work on the farm to feed his family.”

Foreign help is often misguided. Last year, Japanese ecotourists brought gifts to the Zapovednik reserve--coats and fax machines. A year later, the reserve is still without a phone.

Time is running out. Scientists warn that one epidemic would be enough to wipe out the Far Eastern leopard forever.

“We haven’t lost them all, but we’re really close to the edge where we’re going to lose them all,” Pikynov said. “If we sit around without doing anything for any longer, they’re going to disappear. . . . The finality of that error will haunt us.”