In Kafue National Park in Zambia, conservation efforts have nearly tripled the number of leopards — and that bodes well for all other species in the area, Good News Network reported.
The leopard population, which started at 1.5 leopards per 100 square kilometers of territory (38.6 square miles), has now reached an average of 4.4 leopards per 100 square kilometers, an increase of 2.9.
Across 22,700 square miles of territory, that's thousands of leopards, an encouraging improvement for a species that has been in decline.
Kafue National Park is 2.5 times larger than Yellowstone National Park — but, as big as it is, it's only part of the Greater Kafue Ecosystem, which is itself nested inside the Kavango Zambezi Transfrontier Conservation Area. This is the world's largest terrestrial conservation area and spans parts of five countries (Angola, Botswana, Namibia, Zambia, and Zimbabwe).
Since it covers such a large area, it's home to many more species than leopards. In particular, leopards share territory with lions, another species that needs conservation, Good News Network explained.
However, lions get a lot more money for their conservation. Panthera, the wildcat-focused conservation group driving Kafue National Park's success, has had to be creative about its approach.
"It's very large, and has tremendous potential for recovery, but it's been so beaten up for so many decades," said Jon Ayers, board chairman of Panthera, per Good News Network.
To start with, Panthera has been surveying to document the number of leopards and lions in the space.
"Panthera just led the largest survey of lions and leopards ever accomplished in Kafue," Ayers said. "It's kind of like, how do you know if you're winning the game if you don't have a scoreboard? So the surveys act as a scoreboard."
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Definitely 👍 Panthera has also worked with Indigenous groups in the area to find alternatives to their traditional leopard hunts, which resulted in no recorded leopard poaching instances by those groups during the period when leopard population numbers increased.
That's a win for the entire continent. As Ayers said, "Because they're on the top of the food chain, they indicate the health of the whole ecosystem."
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