The African Leopard is widely distributed across Africa, but the population of this sub-species is decreasing and it has been classified as Vulnerable by IUCN’s Red List.
Like most felines, African Leopard are incredibly athletic predators and they can run up to 58 miles per hour and leap an impressive 6 metres forward through the air.
The coat of the African Leopard is covered with rosette-shaped markings. The rosettes on the leopards coat do not contain spots, unlike those of their new world relative the Jaguar. The average lifespan of African Leopard is 10 to 12 years in the wild.
African Leopard have suffered from habitat loss and fragmentation, increased illegal wildlife trade, decline in prey and poorly managed trophy hunting.
Prey species are increasingly under threat from an unsustainable bushmeat trade across large parts of Africa’s savannas. Leopards are also killed illegally for their widely sought-after skins and other body parts used for ceremonial purposes.
African Leopard have limited levels of ecological resilience to human-caused habitat fragmentation, and as a result are more restricted to conservation areas – future decline is anticipated unless conservation efforts are undertaken.
African leopards inhabited a wide range of habitats within Africa, from mountainous forests to grasslands and savannahs, excluding only extremely sandy deserts. They used to live in most of sub-Saharan Africa, occupying both rainforest and arid desert habitats. African leopards successfully adapted to altered natural habitats and settled environments in the absence of intense persecution and they have often been seen close to major cities. But already in the 1980s, they have become rare throughout much of West Africa. Now, African leopards remain patchily distributed within historical limits. During surveys in 2013, they were recorded in Gbarpolu County and Bong County in the Upper Guinean forests of Liberia. They are rare in North Africa. A relict population persists in the Atlas Mountains of Morocco, in forest and mountain steppe, where the climate is temperate to cold. In 2016, an African leopard was recorded for the first time in a semi-arid area of Yechilay in northern Ethiopia.
