{"id":2813,"date":"2026-09-28T02:19:17","date_gmt":"2026-09-28T02:19:17","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/wildleopard.net\/?page_id=2813"},"modified":"2026-09-28T05:21:04","modified_gmt":"2026-09-28T05:21:04","slug":"the-indochinese-leopard","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"https:\/\/wildleopard.net\/index.php\/the-indochinese-leopard\/","title":{"rendered":"The Indochinese Leopard"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

<\/h1>\n\n\n\n

Snared -The Indochinese Leopard<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
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The authors concluded that the Indochinese leopard now appears to have been extirpated from Cambodia, Laos and Vietnam.<\/em><\/strong> – From the archive version published at Oxford University–view HERE<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

It is difficult to write a more consequential sentence about a wild animal.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

But the disappearance of the leopard is not simply the disappearance of one species.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

It is also a warning about what happens to a forest when the animals within it are systematically removed.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

And at the centre of that story is one of the simplest and most destructive tools ever devised for killing wildlife:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

the snare.<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

A leopard lost from a landscape<\/h3>\n\n\n\n

The Indochinese leopard (Panthera pardus delacouri<\/em>) once occupied a vast area of mainland Southeast Asia and southern China.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

By 2016, researchers estimated that it remained in only 6.2% of its historical range<\/strong>, with confirmed presence in just 2.4%. The same assessment estimated between 973 and 2,503 individuals, including only 409\u20131,051 breeding adults.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The situation subsequently became even more severe.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The Indochinese leopard is now classified as Critically Endangered, and recent research indicates that it has disappeared from at least 95% of its historical range in Southeast Asia.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In Cambodia, a long-term study of seven camera-trap surveys between 2009 and 2019 recorded an 82% decline in leopard density<\/strong>, from 1.5 to just 0.3 leopards per 100 km\u00b2.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The researchers found a simultaneous 20-fold increase in human activity and a 1,000-fold increase in encounters with lethal traps<\/strong>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

A further survey in 2021 failed to detect a leopard.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The conclusion was stark: the population appeared to be functionally extinct, if not fully extirpated, from the landscape. The authors identified increasing anthropogenic pressure, particularly snaring, as the primary reason for the decline and concluded that the leopard now appears to have been extirpated across Cambodia, Laos and Vietnam.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

This was not a disappearance caused by some distant historical event.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

It happened within the period of modern conservation.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The snare<\/h3>\n\n\n\n

A snare is brutally simple.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Wire, cable, rope or other readily available material is fashioned into a loop designed to catch an animal as it moves through the forest.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

There is no requirement for the hunter to remain present.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

There is no requirement for the animal to be a particular species.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

And there is no guarantee that anything caught will ever be found alive.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Snares can remain active for long periods. They are indiscriminate and can kill both intended and unintended species through strangulation, injury, infection or starvation.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Across the protected areas of Cambodia, Laos and Vietnam, an estimated 12.3 million snares<\/strong> have been documented or estimated.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Twelve million.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The number is almost impossible to comprehend.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

But perhaps the more important point is what those snares represent.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

They are not twelve million isolated acts.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

They are a landscape-scale mechanism for removing wildlife.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The forest emptied from the ground up<\/h3>\n\n\n\n

The leopard was not the only animal being removed.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

A 2023 study in Cambodia’s Eastern Plains Landscape examined long-term wildlife monitoring alongside ranger records of snaring. It found that terrestrial ungulate populations declined as snare numbers increased, while arboreal primate populations remained comparatively stable. The difference is important: animals moving along the forest floor are particularly exposed to ground-set snares.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

This means the snare does something much larger than killing the occasional leopard.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

It removes the animals upon which the leopard depends.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Leopards are adaptable predators. They can use different habitats and take a wide range of prey. But adaptability has limits.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

A predator cannot survive indefinitely in a forest where the prey base has been systematically depleted.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Earlier research into the Indochinese leopard identified prey declines alongside poaching and habitat loss as major contributing factors in its range collapse. Research in eastern Cambodia also demonstrated the leopard’s dependence upon a substantial prey base, including ungulates.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The snare therefore attacks the leopard twice.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

First, directly.<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Then, by removing the prey on which it depends.<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

What happens when the predator disappears?<\/h3>\n\n\n\n

This is where the story becomes ecological rather than simply zoological.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

A leopard is not merely another animal occupying a forest.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

It is one of the region’s top terrestrial predators.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Large carnivores influence where prey feed, how they move and how different species interact. They form part of the regulatory structure of an ecosystem.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Recent research from Southeast Asian forests found that variation in apex-predator biomass significantly influenced relationships between predators, prey and vegetation. The researchers concluded that both humans and apex predators can exert strong top-down effects through the food web, and emphasised the importance of maintaining apex-predator populations for ecosystem stability.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

This does not mean that every ecological change following the disappearance of the Indochinese leopard can be attributed directly to the leopard’s loss.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

That would go beyond the evidence.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The reality is more complicated.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The same forces that remove the leopard \u2014 snaring, prey depletion, habitat degradation, logging, infrastructure development and increasing human pressure \u2014 can simultaneously restructure the entire ecological community.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

But that complexity should not obscure the fundamental point.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Remove the predator. Remove its prey. Remove other animals. Change the behaviour of those that remain.<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

The relationships begin to change.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

And the forest that remains may still look green from above while becoming biologically impoverished beneath the canopy.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

From wildlife forest to silent forest<\/h3>\n\n\n\n

This is the danger of measuring conservation only by trees.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

A forest can remain standing while becoming increasingly empty.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The vegetation can remain.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The mountains can remain.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The rivers can remain.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The satellite image can still show green.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

But the large mammals can disappear.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Then the medium-sized mammals.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Then the birds and other species affected by changes in predation, competition and food availability.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

This phenomenon is increasingly described through the language of defaunation<\/strong>: the loss of animals from otherwise apparently intact habitats.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Research and conservation assessments across mainland Southeast Asia have described the region as experiencing severe defaunation, with unsustainable hunting pressure from wire snares contributing to forests becoming increasingly emptied of wildlife.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The phrase \u201csilent forest\u201d<\/strong> is therefore more than a metaphor.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

It describes an ecological warning.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

A forest without its wildlife is not the same forest.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The leopard’s disappearance is a symptom<\/h3>\n\n\n\n

There is an understandable tendency to focus on the tragedy of losing a charismatic species.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

We should.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

But the Indochinese leopard may be telling us something even larger.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Its disappearance is a symptom of a wider system of extraction.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The same snare that kills a leopard can kill a muntjac.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The same hunting pressure that removes the leopard’s prey removes other herbivores.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The same wildlife trade that creates demand for leopard parts creates markets for other mammals, birds and reptiles.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

And the same roads and human access routes that make forests easier to enter can facilitate hunting, logging and the movement of wildlife products.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The snare sits within that system.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

It is cheap.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

It is portable.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

It can be deployed in large numbers.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

And because it is indiscriminate, it does not need to know what species will encounter it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

That makes it extraordinarily destructive at landscape scale.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The last strongholds<\/h3>\n\n\n\n

The story is not yet over.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

There are still places where the Indochinese leopard survives.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The Northern Tenasserim Forest Complex on the Thailand\u2013Myanmar border and forests of Peninsular Malaysia have been identified as the remaining major strongholds. A 2024 assessment described the subspecies as having disappeared from at least 95% of its historical Southeast Asian range.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Thailand therefore matters enormously.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Research from the Kaeng Krachan Forest Complex has found a key leopard population that has remained relatively stable over two decades, with estimated density of approximately 2.8\u20133.8 leopards per 100 km\u00b2 in the core area. The same research found that adequate prey availability was important to supporting the population and that human activity negatively affected the space use of both leopards and their prey.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

And there is new evidence from China.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In September 2026, researchers reported a camera-trap detection of an adult male Indochinese leopard in Yunnan’s Nangunhe National Nature Reserve \u2014 the first detection there in almost five years. The animal was photographed in primary forest with negligible human disturbance.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

These records matter.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

They demonstrate that the leopard has not yet disappeared.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

But they also demonstrate how narrow the margin has become.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Prevention before reaction<\/h3>\n\n\n\n

The lesson from Cambodia, Laos and Vietnam should therefore not simply be:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

We lost the leopard.<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

It should be:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

How do we prevent the same thing happening again?<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Waiting until the last animals are detected is not conservation strategy.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

By then, the ecosystem has already absorbed decades of damage.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The response has to begin much earlier.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

That means finding snares before animals encounter them.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Understanding where hunting pressure is concentrated.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Protecting prey populations.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Monitoring changes in wildlife behaviour and distribution.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Following the wildlife trade beyond the forest.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Understanding who is buying the animals and why.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

And using technology and intelligence to move from reaction towards prevention.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

This is where #AntiSnare<\/strong> becomes more than a campaign against one particular hunting method.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

It becomes a strategy for protecting the ecological system itself.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

When the snares win<\/h3>\n\n\n\n

The Indochinese leopard did not simply disappear because there were fewer leopards.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

It disappeared because the landscape around it was changing.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The prey was being removed.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The forest was becoming easier to enter.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Wildlife was becoming a commodity.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

And millions of snares were waiting.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The leopard was one of the most visible casualties.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

It may not have been the only ecological casualty.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

That distinction matters.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Because if we only protect the leopard, we may save an animal.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

If we protect the ecological system that allows the leopard to survive<\/strong>, we have a chance of saving much more.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The Indochinese leopard is therefore not only a story about extinction.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

It is a warning about ecosystem collapse through defaunation<\/strong>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

And the warning is still in time to be acted upon.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The snare is cheap.<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

The snare is silent.<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

The snare does not distinguish between the animal being hunted and the ecosystem around it.<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

The question now is whether we remove the snares before the silence becomes permanent.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

#AntiSnare<\/a><\/strong> – our efforts.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Prevention Before Reaction.<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

More about the snare crisis HERE<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Snared -The Indochinese Leopard The authors concluded that the Indochinese leopard now appears to have been extirpated from Cambodia, Laos and Vietnam. – From the archive version published at Oxford University–view HERE. It is difficult to write a more consequential sentence about a wild animal. But the disappearance of the leopard is not simply the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"parent":0,"menu_order":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":{"_surecart_dashboard_logo_width":"180px","_surecart_dashboard_show_logo":true,"_surecart_dashboard_navigation_orders":true,"_surecart_dashboard_navigation_invoices":true,"_surecart_dashboard_navigation_subscriptions":true,"_surecart_dashboard_navigation_downloads":true,"_surecart_dashboard_navigation_billing":true,"_surecart_dashboard_navigation_account":true,"footnotes":""},"class_list":["post-2813","page","type-page","status-publish","hentry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/wildleopard.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/2813","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/wildleopard.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/wildleopard.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/page"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wildleopard.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wildleopard.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2813"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/wildleopard.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/2813\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2818,"href":"https:\/\/wildleopard.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/2813\/revisions\/2818"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/wildleopard.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2813"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}