Recently, some people reported to the police that a suspected leopard cat was found in the mountain forest of Zhuantang, Hangzhou, and the Hangzhou Wildlife Park, forest public security and agricultural departments are currently looking for it on the spot. There has been no record of leopards in hangzhou for more than 20 years, and the last record of wild leopards in the entire east China region was in 2008 in Huangshan, Anhui.
If this is really a wild leopard, the side also shows that the number of Chinese leopards is recovering, according to the statistics of researchers at the University of Copenhagen and Beijing Normal University in China on the northern leopard in China, the number of Chinese leopards is growing rapidly, taking the Meridian Ridge forest area in Shaanxi as an example, the North China leopard from 88 in 2016 to 110 in 2017, of which the growth rate reached 25% in 1 year.
With the disappearance of tigers and the increase in the number of leopards, the throne of the king of the forest will also change hands.
<h1 class="pgc-h-arrow-right" data-track="6" > Chinese tiger population</h1>
In the past, tigers were widely distributed throughout Asia, and there were many of them. Now, the tigers have suffered an unprecedented catastrophe, and their numbers have dropped sharply. 50 years ago, the total number of Asian tigers was about 60,000, and the total number of Chinese tigers was about 20,000. At present, the total number of wild tigers in the world is only about 7,000. Among them, there are about 4500 Bengal tigers, about 170 Siberian tigers, about 20 South China tigers, about 2000 Indochinese tigers, and about 600 Sumatran tigers.
Although China has 4 subspecies of tigers, the number of each subspecies is very small. Taking the Siberian tiger as an example, WWF began to carry out the Siberian tiger project in northeast China in 2006, and after 2013, it carried out comprehensive infrared camera monitoring of the overall area of the Siberian tiger distribution. So far, 1,100 to 1,200 infrared cameras have been deployed in an area of nearly 10,000 square kilometers.
According to systematic monitoring of Siberian tiger populations in Heilongjiang and Jilin provinces using far-infrared cameras by WWF and other collaborative teams over the past five years, from 2013 to 2017, the cumulative number of different individuals of Siberian tigers in China was nearly 47, including 9 breeding families and 16 cubs. In 2017 alone, the number of different individuals of Siberian tigers detected by infrared cameras reached 24 throughout the year.
From these latest data, it can be seen that the population of The Northeast China Tiger and Leopard has a certain upward trend. However, WWF also pointed out that the Siberian tiger is a cross-border species, these individuals are not entirely settled in China, and some tigers and leopards are shuttled back and forth between the Border between China and Russia.
This also means that the recovery and conservation of China's wild Siberian tiger population has ushered in a rare opportunity, but it has not yet reached a completely optimistic situation. As for the most endangered South China tiger, we haven't seen them in the wild for 20 years.
Over the years, the implementation and promotion of various measures such as the comprehensive commercial ban on natural forests, the return of farmland to forests and grasslands, the establishment, expansion and improvement of nature reserve networks, and the comprehensive ban on hunting, and the shooting frequency of large ungulates such as wild boars and sika deer monitored by cameras are also increasing. Nature is a leopard.
<h1 class="pgc-h-arrow-right" data-track="6" > Chinese leopards are recovering lost ground</h1>
The Chinese leopard is mainly the North China leopard, and the North China leopard is a subspecies of the leopard, which is a Specialty of China, so it is also called the Chinese Leopard. It is about 1.7-2.1 meters long from head to tail, the tail is more than half the body length, and the male weighs about 60-75 kg and the female weighs about 40-55 kg.
In the 1950s and 1960s, China 'fighting tigers to eliminate pests' and "leopard pests" also eliminated "leopard pests", coupled with changes in the habitat, so that in the past 30 years (1980-2010) the leopard population in many areas has decreased sharply or has disappeared. Shanxi province killed 1,750 North China leopards in the 1960s. In the 1980s, the North China leopard in Gansu, Hebei, Ningxia and Beijing was basically extinct.
Thanks to China's efforts in forest protection, we have increased the protection and construction of national parks and natural protected areas, promoted the implementation of major ecological protection projects for forests and grasslands, such as natural forest protection projects, returning farmland to forests, returning grazing land to grasslands, sealing mountains and raising forests, afforestation and afforestation, and continued to severely crack down on indiscriminate hunting and illegal trade, which has largely curbed the momentum of resource destruction. At the same time, we have continuously increased the publicity of protection, enhanced the public's awareness of protection, created a good social atmosphere, promoted the restorative growth of wild animal and plant resources, and ensured the ecological security of important areas.
This has also promoted the recovery of the Chinese leopard population, although leopards belong to the same big cat family as lions and tigers, but compared with the size of lions and tigers, leopards are obviously inferior. At the same time, though, leopards should be the most adaptable of all big cats. Its attack power is not weak, and researchers have observed the North China leopard attacking about 200 pounds of adult wild boar. Under the oppression of the North China leopard, the wild boar has been fleeing. Finally, at the edge of a pond with cliffs on three sides, the North China leopard directly bites through the throat of the wild boar. And the size of the boar was so large that M2 couldn't drag it out of the water onto the grass. Finally, the head of the wild boar was found tens of meters away.
In the absence of large prey, small prey can also satisfy the appetite, the territorial range is not so harsh, and the adaptability to the environment can be said to be the top among large predators.
Therefore, in the case of the endangered Siberian tiger and the Bengal tiger and the disappearance of the South China tiger in the wild, it can be said that only the wild big cat of the North China leopard is left in our Chinese hinterland. In fact, the North China leopard has also become the most advanced predator in the local ecosystem, and the largest North China leopard population monitored so far is the 800 square kilometer core survey area of the Meridian Ridge forest area, and a total of 28 North China leopards have been photographed, of which 12 are females.
The increase in the number of Chinese leopards also proves China's achievements in forest protection, because only the survival of the ecosystem and food chain to recover to good condition can support the effective reproduction and development of the North China leopard population.
The continuous recovery of the Leopard population in North China marks that the fragile ecosystems in North China, such as the Taihang Mountains to the Loess Plateau in northern Shaanxi, have been protected and recuperated for many years, and the once barren mountains and bald mountains and loess soil have now begun to gradually become tree-lined, and the wildlife population and biodiversity have shown a clear recovery trend.
<h1 class="pgc-h-arrow-right" data-track="6" > the annoyance of increasing leopard populations</h1>
Of course, with the continuous recovery of the Chinese leopard population, the contradiction of human-animal conflict has always existed. For example, the attack on domestic cattle, Shanxi has repeatedly occurred in Shanxi, the North China leopard attacked the cow cub under the care of the cow, and finally dragged the cow cub directly to the tree. The data shows that in 2017, a total of 54 cattle were killed by North China leopards in Shanxi and Shun County (compensation has been compensated).
This is also the problem we need to solve at present, that is, with the recovery of ecological populations, how to balance the contradictions between humans and animals, not only so that we have a better living environment, but also let wild animals have a better survival paradise.