It is this elusiveness that has enabled leopards to persist in larger numbers than their more endangered cousins, and yet makes them more difficult to spot in the wild. Over the years, I have gone to many protected areas in Asia with the hope of sighting wild leopards. This I have managed, with great luck , in the national parks of India and in Sri Lanka. Closer to home, they have eluded me thus far in Southeast Asia, where some of the more prime areas in Java, Cambodia and Thailand have failed to yield any sightings unfortunately, likely due to greater persecution and a diminished prey base.
Just next door in peninsular Malaysia where leopards are almost all of the black variety, the likelihood of encountering one is even slimmer not only because of their dark coloration, but owing to the thick evergreen rainforest environment where they inhabit. However that does not stop me from finding out as much about black panthers as I can, and I am pleased to share the fruits of my labor in the form of two published articles.
1) Natural history of the leopard (Panthera pardus) in Peninsular Malaysia
Having a research paper published in an established scientific periodical is quite an achievement for a non-scientist like myself, and I am truly honored that the Malayan Nature Journal accepted my manuscript!
2) Black panthers of Singapore
A popular account of the history of the species in my home country, sort of an appendix, if you will, to the more technical article above.
Addendum:
In the interest of brevity, I omitted the following observation in the second article:
Compared to tigers, reported leopard sightings started later and peaked in the 1890s and early 1900s. I postulate two reasons for this. Firstly, as tigers were being hunted intensively from the mid 1800s, their population declined significantly, allowing leopard numbers to increase, a phenomenon also known as 'mesopredator release' as competitive pressure eased. Second, looking at the history of land use and forest cover in Singapore, there appears to be a short window of time beginning in the 1880s and lasting till 1910 where forested area actually increased in extent. This was due to the diminishing acreage of pepper and gambier plantations, which were incidentally associated with tiger attacks on people. Fewer tigers and a concomitant recovery in forest coverage likely served to benefit leopards. Then, as the cultivation of rubber took off from around 1910, natural habitat for large animals quickly declined and sightings of leopards also dropped and were limited to the offshore islands.
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| Source: Corlett 1992 The Ecological transformation of Singapore, 1819-1990 |
I hope you enjoy reading these two articles as much as I had researching and writing them. Comments are most welcome, I would love to expand our knowledge of this most beautiful and enigmatic of all animals, truly the Prince of Cats!
