Thirteen years, 1,500 infrared cameras, hundreds of catnip-baited hair traps and an almost incalculable number of hours in the field have confirmed what scientists have long feared: the Formosan clouded leopard (Neofelis nebulosa brachyura) is in all likelihood extinct. The subspecies, endemic to Taiwan, was wiped out by poaching, trade in its pelts during the [...]

Poaching, habitat loss, inbreeding and hybridization. These are just a few of the threats faced by many wild feline species around the globe. Here are six of the world’s most endangered feline species and subspecies—some of which may not survive into the next century. 1. Amur leopards Let’s start with the good news: The population [...]

This has been the deadliest year on record for Florida panthers (Puma or Felis concolor coryi), but the critically endangered big cats also ended 2012 with some pretty amazing news. For the first time, an uncollared female has been photographed carrying her cubs to a new den. The photographs, taken by motion-sensitive camera traps two [...]

Wow, this is quite the week for snow leopards (Panthera uncia) with not one, not two, not three but four interesting stories coming out about these endangered big cats. Let’s start with the bad news. Climate change, as you might expect, could soon create trouble for snow leopards living in the Himalayas. According to a [...]

They go by a lot of names: mountain lions, cougars, pumas, catamounts and more. But people living in the Midwest may soon have a new name for these big cats: neighbor. Cougars (Puma concolor) have not lived in Oklahoma, Missouri and other midwestern states since the  beginning of the 20th century. But now the cats [...]

India’s leopards are dying at a rate of at least one per day, according to a report released this week by the Wildlife Protection Society of India (WPSI). At least half of those deaths have been caused by poachers seeking the big cats’ valuable skins, claws and other body parts. Leopards (Panthera pardus), which live [...]

Jurassic meow? Scientists at Monash University in Melbourne, Australia, have come up with a novel idea for possibly saving endangered big cats: reproduce them in the lab. And the researchers have already accomplished the first step, creating embryonic stem-like cells from the tissue of an endangered adult snow leopard (Panthera uncia). The research was published [...]

If the eastern cougar (Puma concolor couguar) went extinct in the 1930s, as the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service (FWS) reported back in March, why do so many people in New England keep reporting cougar sightings? As FWS lead scientist Mark McCollough told me in March, the 110 confirmed cases on cougars (sometimes called mountain [...]

Conservation groups are reporting better than expected news on two rare leopard species, the critically endangered Amur leopard (Panthera pardus orientalis) in Russia and the endangered snow leopard (P. uncia) in Afghanistan. First up, the Amur leopard, of which there are fewer than 50 animals left in the wild. But those weak numbers might be [...]

One of the risks in writing about endangered species is concentrating too much on the cute ones. But I couldn’t skip covering the African black-footed cat (Felis nigripes) and the scientific breakthrough that could give this rare species an extra chance at survival. The African black-footed cat is one of the world’s smallest and rarest [...]

Matt Wedel kindly passed on the photos you see here. They show the Man-eater of Mfuwe, an enormous male lion Panthera leo that terrorised the small town of Mfuwe (and the surrounds) in the Luangwa River Valley of eastern Zambia. The photos were taken in Chicago’s Field Museum where the specimen has been on display [...]

Virtually all people interested in animals are aware of the so-called ‘mystery big cat’ phenomenon. Large, often black, cats are reported with apparent frequency from the eastern USA and the UK. But the phenomenon isn’t unique to those two areas. Here, we’re going to look specifically at the ‘mystery big cat’ phenomenon in Australia. The [...]