Big Cat Network

Conservation officers are calling it a once-in-a-lifetime sight.

A Lake Cowichan man captured an intense battle in the backcountry between two of B.C.’s most fearsome predators: a cougar and a wolf.

Rod Mizak was driving down a logging service road near Cowichan Lake with a friend at around 3 a.m. on May 21 when he stumbled upon the incredible scene.

“At the beginning we weren’t sure what was going on,” he said. “We realized quite quickly it was a cougar and a wolf…It took a minute for us to pick up our jaws off our laps.”

“With a long time passing of the leopard’s death, no trace of being shot by a gun has yet been detected; given the young age of the leopard, we speculate that other animals would be the cause of the death of the leopard; anyway, the investigation to find the cause of death is underway,” Motahari told reporters.

Motahari lamented the fact that since the beginning of the current year, four Persian leopards had been found dead in the province. “The leopard is a flagship of the ecosystem of the region, and decimation of its population would undermine the finely held natural balance; with reduced population of leopard, the number of wolves and wild hogs in the region rises with the consequence being damage to farmers and cattle breeders,” he said.

A three year old Amur tiger has been successfully captured, collared and released into a mountainous region in the Russian Far East. The young male was identified as a ‘conflict tiger’ in a prey depleted area but rather than confining him to a life of captivity, the Russian government opted to give him a second chance.

Written by Lynx

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Wildlife conservation experts in Nepal say they have made a significant advance by fitting a satellite collar on a second snow leopard in the Kanchenjunga Himalayan region.

The move will allow conservationists to use GPS satellite monitoring to track the endangered animal as it crosses national boundaries.

Officials say data received from the satellite device will help officials identify the animal's habitat areas and devise conservation strategies accordingly.

The world’s most endangered feline species, the Iberian lynx, is making a comeback in Spain after being pushed to the brink of extinction.

But the costly efforts to reintroduce the spotted cat into the wild face an unexpected enemy – cars.

The number of lynx killed by collisions with vehicles has soared since Spain’s economic crisis began in 2008.

Following six decades of decline, the population of the Iberian Lynx (Lynx pardinus) increased from 52 mature individuals in 2002 to 156 in 2012. The species has now moved from the Critically Endangered to Endangered category on the IUCN Red List. 

This was achieved thanks to intensive conservation action including the restoration of rabbit populations – the main prey species of the Iberian Lynx - monitoring for illegal trapping, conservation breeding, reintroduction programmes and compensation schemes for landowners, which made their properties compatible with the habitat requirements of the Iberian Lynx. 

After a four-year long review, the US Fish and Wildlife service has proposed declaring the eastern cougar extinct. This would remove them from the endangered species list.

The agency says that while eastern cougar sightings do occur from time to time, they’re most likely astray individuals from western North America, or ones that have been released from captivity. The last eastern cougar was believed to be shot by a hunter in 1938. 

High stress levels in tigers, caused by human activity, have affected their breeding in the Sariska Tiger Reserve in Rajasthan, a study says.

Tigers were reintroduced in the Sariska and Panna tiger reserves after poaching, habitat loss and prey depletion made them extinct in those protected areas. As part a species recovery programme, tigers were reintroduced between 2008 and 2010 in Sariska and 2009 and 2013 in Panna.