Leopards listed as VULNERABLE by IUCN Red List

The leopard has been upgraded to VULNERABLE by the IUCN Red List. Dr. Andrew Stein, founder of CLAWS Conservancy, led an international team of scientists to evaluate the global status of leopards. The effort included input from scientists across more than 60 countries from sub-Saharan Africa, the Middle East, South Asia, southeast Asia, China and the Russian Far-East. It was determined through habitat destruction, prey depletion through the bushmeat trade and illegal harvesting of skins, that leopards are significantly under threat and require increased protection. Previously listed as Near Threatened, leopards were not thought to be under threat because of their adaptable behavior and secretive nature, however, improved field techniques and widespread surveys helped determine that leopards are not as well off as previously thought.

As a Vulnerable species, leopards are one step closer to Endangered, requiring special protection and management considerations. It will likely impact trophy hunting regulations and problem animal control responses.

Have a look at the official document HERE!

Matching Contribution as Crowdfunding Closes!

Our crowdfunding campaign has come to a close and we surpassed our goal of raising $3,000 towards a new lion collar. This satellite collar will help us expand our lion work in Northern Botswana. At the conclusion of the campaign an inspired donor came forward to offer a matching donation- so our total for the campaign has reached $6,130! Now your initial contribution has double the impact and we plan to purchase another collar and help support our field operations in Lion Camp! So thank you to all who contributed to our campaign by donating or sharing the link to our website. Also, a tremendous THANK YOU to Rocky Casillas who helped keep our campaign organized with Florian Weise and Eric LeFlore adding stories and photos along the way. This was a huge success and we look forward to keeping you all involved and informed as the project develops!

Understanding overlap between lion and livestock movements!

Pride in Our Prides is about improving human-lion coexistence outside protected areas.  We develop pragmatic tools that reduce livestock losses and increase tolerance for the big cats.  Approaches to conflict mitigation can be either traditional (like livestock kraals) or more modern using advanced technology.  For example, we fit lions with state-of-the-art GPS collars that relay warning messages when lions leave safe tourism areas and move closer to people and their livestock.  As part of our conflict prevention research we continually refine this alert system.  To identify zones of highest conflict likelihood it is important that we also understand the daily movements of cattle in our area.  For that purpose we recently started to tag cattle with GPS trackers too.  The units will reveal crucial detail of the herds’ movements that can be assessed against lion activity.  Here are some action shots from the field. flo