Panthera

The first conservation plan that encompasses the lion’s entire African range, Panthera’s Project Leonardo aims to protect lions in the key lion conservation landscapes that remain, including in and just outside key African national parks, and build or support corridors that guarantee their safe passage. The program’s overall goal is to bring lion populations back to a minimum of 30,000 individuals within 15 years.

After identifying Lion Conflict Landscapes, or areas where lions are under the greatest threat, Panthera introduces tools and techniques tailored to specific lion populations and surrounding communities. These measures include mitigating human-lion conflict by working with villagers to implement better animal husbandry techniques, supporting local law enforcement in their efforts to reduce illegal hunting, and sustainably managing legal hunting.
Using high-resolution satellite imagery, surveys, motion-triggered remote camera traps, and other innovative technology, Panthera’s scientists are able to survey and monitor lion populations, helping to identify populations in jeopardy and assess the effectiveness of implemented conservation actions.

Panthera is currently leading or supporting efforts in 15 of the 27 lion range states in Africa, including Angola, Benin, Botswana, Burkina Faso, Chad, Gabon, Kenya, Mozambique, Namibia, Niger, Nigeria, South Africa, Tanzania, Zambia, and Zimbabwe.

When Panthera’s Vice President Dr. George Schaller captured the first known photograph of the snow leopard in the early 1970s, almost nothing was known about this elusive wild cat. Even today, the snow leopard is one of the least understood of the big cat species.

Utilizing new techniques tailored to monitor wildlife in remote and rugged landscapes, Panthera’s Snow Leopard Program is collecting a wealth of data to better understand this enigmatic species and how best to protect it.

Panthera’s scientists are conducting surveys on snow leopard and prey populations, training national biologists in conservation methods, assessing threats, securing habitat, mitigating human-wildlife conflict by collaborating with local communities, and helping governments establish and implement National Snow Leopard Action Plans.
Today, Panthera’s Snow Leopard Program currently leads or supports conservation activities in seven of the 12 snow leopard range countries, including China, Tajikistan, Kyrgyz Republic, India, Nepal, Pakistan and Uzbekistan. Our team is rapidly expanding our conservation efforts in China, where more than half of all wild snow leopards are thought to exist.

Panthera’s Jaguar Corridor Initiative is the only conservation program that seeks to protect jaguars across their entire six million km2 range. In partnership with governments, corporations, and local communities, Panthera’s Jaguar Corridor Initiative is working to preserve the genetic integrity of the jaguar by connecting and protecting core jaguar populations in human landscapes from northern Mexico to Argentina.

This is built on a multi-dimensional process. Country by country, Panthera’s scientists begin by mapping the jaguar’s presence and the corridors through which they live and move. A corridor might include a cattle ranch, a canal development, a citrus plantation, or someone’s backyard. Using these data, Panthera partners with governments and corporations to support land developments that are both economically profitable and ecologically sustainable, allowing safe passage for jaguars and other wildlife.
Our scientists work to mitigate human-jaguar conflict surrounding livestock predation by training ranchers in anti-predator husbandry techniques, such as building predator-proof enclosures. Panthera’s field teams also educate local communities about overhunting of jaguar prey species, which encourages livestock predation.

Panthera is currently leading or supporting efforts in 14 of the 18 jaguar range states, including Argentina, Belize, Bolivia, Brazil, Colombia, Costa Rica, Guatemala, Guyana, Honduras, Mexico, Nicaragua, Panama, and Venezuela.

Project Pardus is the first conservation program to span the leopard’s range. Despite the species’ broad range, it is likely the most persecuted big cat in the world.

Panthera’s scientists are dedicated to understanding where sustainable leopard populations currently exist or can be rebuilt, and implementing conservation actions to reduce leopard killings. In partnership with local and national governments, corporations, NGOs and local communities, Panthera’s efforts focus on monitoring leopard population trends, stopping the illicit fur trade, reducing human-leopard conflict, stabilizing and increasing prey populations, and reducing unsustainable legal trophy hunting.
Panthera has initiated and supported conservation projects that protect leopards in 30 countries, across Africa, the Middle East and tropical Asia. Panthera will continue to develop successful, sustainable conservation models and expand Project Pardus’s reach into other parts of the leopard’s range.

Ensuring a future for the cheetah must allow the species to roam over vast areas to capture prey, making cheetah conservation at the landscape-scale critical for the species’ survival. Panthera’s approach to protecting cheetahs has a dual focus: developing a program that can eventually be expanded across the cheetah’s African range and conserving the small remaining population of Asiatic cheetahs in Iran.
In both areas, Panthera is working to collect critical ecological data about cheetahs, monitor populations, enhance law enforcement efforts to protect cheetahs and their prey, and identify and address other critical threats.

Despite their broad range, pumas are elusive and therefore often mischaracterized as vicious, solitary predators, leading to persecution and fueling human-puma conflict. Panthera is conducting novel research into the behavior and ecology of the species in order to determine how to effectively and sustainably manage pumas in landscapes that are increasingly dominated by humans.
Panthera is focusing on key areas where in which pumas face imminent threats, including the southern Greater Yellowstone Ecosystem, the central coast of California, the area surrounding Torres del Paine National Park in Chile and the western Sierra Madre mountains in Mexico. Program activities include conflict mitigation, education, studying puma prey selection, addressing livestock predation, and studying the impact of reintroduced wolves in different parts of the puma’s range.

There are 40 recognized species of wild cats in the world. Most people are familiar with the big and medium-sized species, but few can name the 33 smaller cats. Panthera’s Small Cats Program is expanding our focus in wild cat conservation to bring the increasingly threatened small cat species to the world’s attention and enact science-based conservation action on their behalf.

Only a handful of studies have investigated the ecology of small cats, and subsequently, there are huge knowledge gaps about species population sizes, threats, and more. This lack of data can significantly hamper conservation action and make many highly-threatened small cat species appear as low priorities on the conservation agenda. Moreover, while some species may be considered common, little is known about how changes in land use and other threats impact them.

Panthera's Small Cats Program conducts rigorous scientific research on small cat species in priority conservation regions to understand their ecology, including population trends and habitat use, all while studying the threats these enigmatic species face. In doing so, we mold and inform our conservation strategies and actions that seek to ensure all wild cats, no matter the size, live on for generations to come.