IUCN / SSC Cat Specialist Group - Digital Cat Library |
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| Henschel, P. | |
| The Status of the Leopard (_Panthera pardus_) in the Congo Basin | |
| 2007 Conference Proceeding | |
The status of the leopard in the rain forests of the Congo Basin remains a matter of controversy. While authors of earlier status surveys described this region as a stronghold for the species, and estimated that above 40% of Africa's leopards occurred in these forests, recent evidence suggests that leopards are indeed one of the main casualties of Central Africa's bushmeat crisis, and have consequently become locally extinct in numerous forest sites on the fringes of the Congo Basin. Here we present field data collected on leopards in four rainforest sites in Gabon, which differed in the amount of human disturbance they received. Leopard population density and mean leopard prey weight was highest in a remote national park, and leopards were absent from a site frequented by commercial bushmeat hunters. We identified a linear relationship between leopard population density and the distance from permanent settlements, and incorporated this relationship into a leopard population model which we designed for Gabon and the remaining Congo Basin countries. While the status of the leopard seems satisfactory in most of Gabon and the Republic of Congo, our model suggests that the species is almost extinct in southern Nigeria, south-western Cameroon, and Equatorial Guinea. |
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