Research overview: camera-trap monitoring of Amur leopards

Long-term camera-trap monitoring underpins knowledge of the Amur leopard, allowing researchers to identify every individual in the population by its unique rosette pattern and to track numbers, survival, and reproduction over time. This overview surveys how dense camera arrays across the leopard's small range, centered on Land of the Leopard National Park, produce near-complete censuses of this critically small population. Studies document population growth, recruitment of cubs, movement between Russia and China, and individual life histories with unusual precision for a wild big cat. The monitoring provides an early-warning system for poaching or disease impacts and a rigorous measure of conservation progress. The overview frames this intensive surveillance as a model for managing extremely small populations, where the ability to account for nearly every animal makes management decisions and trend detection far more reliable than for more numerous, widely dispersed cats.