Indochinese leopard

The Indochinese leopard (Panthera pardus delacouri) is a leopard subspecies native to mainland Southeast Asia and southern China. In Indochina, leopards are rare outside protected areas and threatened by habitat loss due to deforestation as well as poaching for the illegal wildlife trade. The population trend is suspected to be decreasing. As of 2016, the population is thought to comprise 973–2,503 mature individuals, with only 409–1,051 breeding adults. The historical range has decreased by more than 90%. Panthera pardus delacouri was described in 1930 by Pocock based on a leopard skin from Annam. Pocock described an Indochinese leopard skin as almost rusty-red in ground colour but paler at the sides. It had small rosettes that were mostly 3.8 cm × 3.8 cm (1.5 in × 1.5 in) in diameter and so closely set that it looked dark. The fur was short with less than 2.5 cm (0.98 in) long hair on the back. He commented to have seen only black leopards from Johor and other areas in the Malay Peninsula exhibited in menageries. He therefore assumed that the proportion of black leopards increases farther south. Records from camera trapping studies conducted at 22 locations in Peninsular Malaysia and southern Thailand between 1996 and 2009 show that Indochinese leopards recorded north of the Kra Isthmus are predominantly spotted. South of the Isthmus, only melanistic leopards were present. Melanism is quite common in dense tropical forest habitat, and black leopards have a selective advantage for ambush. The Indochinese leopard is distributed in Southeast Asia, where today small populations remain only in Myanmar, Thailand, Malaysia, Cambodia, and southern China. In Laos, Vietnam and Singapore it is suspected to have been extirpated. Peninsular Malaysia and the Northern Tenasserim Forest Complex on the Thailand-Myanmar border are at present considered strongholds, and eastern Cambodia a priority site. In Myanmar's Chatthin Wildlife Sanctuary, the leopard population declined so drastically between the 1940s and 1980s, that by 2000 it was estimated as being close to locally extinct.In 2015, leopards were recorded for the first time by camera traps in the hill forests of Karen State. In Thailand, the Indochinese leopard is present in the Western Forest Complex, Kaeng Krachan-Kui Buri and Khlong Saeng-Khao Sok protected area complexes. But since the turn of the 21st century, it has not been recorded any more in the northern and south-central forest complexes of the country. In Hala Bala Wildlife Sanctuary on the Thai-Malaysian border, only two leopards walked past camera traps deployed between October 2004 and October 2007. In Malaysia, the leopard is present in Belum-Temengor, Taman Negara and Endau-Rompin National Parks. It has also been recorded in a secondary forest in Selangor state.In April 2010, a spotted leopard was camera trapped in the Taman Negara National Park in, where previously only black leopards were thought to occur.