Paris — The leopard population in a region of SA once thick with the big cats is crashing, and could be wiped out within a few years, scientists warned on Wednesday. The illegal killing of leopards in the Soutpansberg has reduced their numbers by two-thirds in the past decade, the researchers reported in the Royal Society Open Science journal. "If things don’t change, we predict leopards will essentially disappear from the area by about 2020," lead author Sam Williams, a conservation biologist at Durham University in England, said. "This is especially alarming given that, in 2008, this area had one of the highest leopard densities in Africa." The number of leopards in the wild worldwide is not known, but is diminishing elsewhere as well. The "best estimate" for all of SA, said Williams, was about 4,500. What is certain, however, is that the regions in which these predators roam has shrunk drastically over the past two centuries. The historic range of Panthera pardus, which includes ...
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