Leopard rediscovred in Morocco (1 Viewer)

[Mohamed Amezian]

Hi,

The leopard Panthera pardus which was reported extinct in North Africa still survive in Morocco in a core population of about thirty cats discovered recently. This discovery is presented in a book entitled “El leopardo del Atlas", by Professor Francisco Purroy presented yesterday in León, Spain. For more detail see this article in Spanish: http://www.telecinco.es/informativos/cultura/noticia/1274139/1274139

 

[Melanie]

Great news. A few years ago the Barbary Leopard was also filmed in Algeria.

 

[Mohamed Amezian]

Thanks for pointing out this. Googling a little gave this recent article on the subject:

Busby G.B.J. et al. 2009. Genetic analysis of scat reveals leopard Panthera pardus and cheetah Acinonyx jubatus in southern Algeria. Oryx 43: 412-415.

 

[Isurus]

Some rogue tags in the midst of your link mohamed - this should work for anyone struggling:
http://saharaconservation.org/IMG/pdf/Busby_et_al_2009_algeria.pdf

 

[Mohamed Amezian]

Some rogue tags in the midst of your link mohamed - this should work for anyone struggling:
http://saharaconservation.org/IMG/pdf/Busby_et_al_2009_algeria.pdf

Thanks for correcting this, I should have checked the link before posting

 

[Azamour]

Hello,

I wonder why this discovery was not published in true peer-reviewed international journal.

Also, I already read about this subject in Moroccan forums and Spanish newspapers (like the one in post 1). However, there is no trace of this news neither in French websites nor in Anglophone websites, except probably this one:http://wuming520.blog.com/2010/06/04/are-a-population-of-leopards-was-takenb/

Attached is a Spanish newspaper reporting the same discovery 7 years ago (July 2003) by the same authors (Francisco José Purroy and colleagues) as in post 1 (I found this some time ago in a forum). So, 7 years passed and there is no paper on the subject (may be I am wrong and it was published somewhere and I didn’t found it, if so please let me know and thanks in advance).

However, if this is not published in a journal, I personally found this very strange way to publish important discoveries like this one (read the link above where he describes this book as something between science and literature).

sincerely,

 

[honeym]

There is a paper that should have some relevant data:

Cuzin, F. 1996. Status and present geographical distribution of the wild species of primates, Carnivora and Artiodactyla in Morocco. MAMMALIA Volume: 60 (Issue: 1) Pages: 101-124.

Martin

 

[Azamour]

Hello all,

Thank you Martin but I think that the article you cited is a bit old (1996) and the data must be gathered years before. Since 2000, there were 2 studies on leopards in Morocco: one lead by scientists from Cambridge University in the UK and they didn't found any cat. The other study is lead by Spanish scientists (see post 1). The question is why this latter scientists did not publish their discovery in an international scientific jopurnal. If they discovered that 30 leopards still surviving in Morocco, whereas a previous study failed to do so, then this is a major discovery (to me anyway) and should be published in a scientific/conservation journal not in a literature book. I am sorry if I got the entire story wrong.

thanks,