In recent months, a female Amur leopard with a cub has killed several deer at the Gamov deer farm. On one occasion she killed as many as three deer during a single visit! On Monday 8 September, I received a phone call from the Gamov farm. A farm staff member informed me that another sika deer had been killed. I grabbed the four camera-traps that I had recently received, jumped in my jeep and drove to the farm which is located on the Gamov Peninsular about 40 kilometres from our base.

This photo shows a herd of sika deer at the Gamov farm. The Gamov farm is one of only three deer farms remaining in the Amur leopard's range in SW Primorye near Vladivostok. Native sika deer are raised at the deer farms for their antler velvet, which is a popular ingredient in Chinese medicines. The velvet is harvested and exported to China. Unfortunately, most deer farms have gone bankrupt after the collapse of the Soviet Union. Twenty years ago, probably as many as twenty thousand deer were held at more than a dozen deer farms in the region. Now, fewer than two thousand deer remain at farms. These deer form a welcome additional food source for leopards and tigers.

Here, I examine another deer killed at the Gamov farm. Our team has been operating a livestock kill compensation scheme, in an effort to appease farm staff and prevent attempts to kill leopards and tigers that visit their farms. The scheme is financed by Phoenix Fund from Vladivostok with support from ZSL. The damage that results from livestock kills is fully compensated. Since 1999, we have made compensation payments of more than $US 20,000 in total for more than 50 livestock kills, including 35 deer. Other animals killed included horses, cows, sheep, goats, dogs and rabbits.

The fences at the farm make it easier for Amur leopards and tigers to kill a deer. There is not much left of this one!

For some time I have been planning to take photos of leopards and tigers with camera-traps. The big cats often return to their kills for a second meal, so I assumed that it was possible to take photos of the cats with cam-traps placed at livestock kills. The problem was that our team doesn’t own cam-traps and there was no budget available that made it possible to buy them. Fortunately, our partners at WCS helped out. They provided four cam-traps, on loan until they start their annual cam-trap work in the winter, and a WCS staff member taught me how to use them.

The deer farms attract endangered black vultures that winter in this part of Russia. I took this photo at the Gamov deer farm a few years ago when we were feeding starved vultures. The vultures often eat the remains of the livestock kills.

I forgot to introduce myself and my colleagues!

The anti-poaching team that I lead has been operating in the small range of the Amur leopard since 1998. We have confiscated more than 400 rifles and 3 leopard skins, and we have produced more than a thousand citations for poaching and other violations. I am the second from the left; the tall guy! We have been working with German shepherd dogs for a few years. They are very effective in tracing poachers when there is no snow and tracks are not visible.

When I arrived at the farm, a staff member showed me the fresh kill. Much of the deer had already been eaten, and therefore I suspect that the female leopard and her cub, which must be almost full-grown now, had eaten together. However, there was still sufficient meat left, so it was possible that the leopards would return. My first chance to use the cam-traps!

However, there was a problem. The deer was killed quite far from any cover, and there were no trees or fence posts to which I could attach a cam-trap. I dragged two logs to the spot and attached two cam-traps to the logs.

Here I am setting up one of the cam-traps. In the back ground you can see enclosures and sheds where the deer are fed every day and where their antlers are cut off in early summer when they are still in velvet. You can see that the hill tops in the background are treeless. This is the result of frequent ground fires that kill young trees. Another big threat to the survival of leopards and tigers!

I feared that the leopards would not trust the situation because of the logs and would not come back, but when I returned the next day, the deer had been moved about 9 meters and the cam-traps had taken photos. Needless to say, I was extremely curious about what would appear in the photos! It took a day for the film to be developed. When I finally received the prints, there was a leopard in three photos! Strangely, more photos had been taken, but they showed no animal at all. The photos were made around 6 pm, only three hours after I had left.

Here are the three photos. They are not of the best quality, but still I am very happy with this result, the first ever photos of an Amur leopard at a livestock kill. Both sides of the leopard are visable, and this means it will be possible to identify this leopard if it appears in cam-trap photos in the future.

It is impossible to determine the sex of the leopard with certainty from the photos, but the leopard is slender and elegant. If I would have to guess, I would say it is a female. Maybe her cub waited in the distance until she had moved her kill away from the logs and camera-traps, but we will never know!

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