"Putin's leopard" was caught stealing chickens in an Abkhazian village

Last night in Abkhazia, near the village of Lykhny, a unique event occurred: local residents caught a leopard, which, most likely, was released into the wild in 2016 from the Sochi nursery.

According to local residents, the leopard has been seen for about a week in the forest next to the village. At the same time, small domestic animals began to disappear from the villagers. One of the locals decided to catch a predator and built a cage trap in which he planted a live chicken for bait.

The leopard didn't attack the chicken for some reason. Probably, the predator, having fallen into a trap, completely forgot about food from stress. As a result, the black hen, accustomed to the unusual neighborhood, strutted around the cage.

The photo shows that the brave bird almost stands on the predator and is not afraid of it at all, and the leopard steadfastly tolerates such "impudence", lies sadly and looks at one point, waiting for its further fate.

The leopard did not want to stay in the mountains, but went down to the people. According to scientists, this can be explained by the fact that he was raised in captivity. Presumably, a leopard caught in the village of Lykhny may be one of three animals released into the Caucasus Mountains in 2016 by the Sochi Leopard Breeding and Acclimatization Center.

The program to restore the leopard population in the Caucasus, launched in 2009, was personally supervised by Russian President Vladimir Putin.

On July 15, 2016, three leopards from the Sochi Reintroduction Center — Akhun, Victoria and Killi — were released into the Caucasian Biosphere Reserve. To control their movement, 14 camera traps were installed. They were placed on Mount Akhtsarkhva.

The radio collars that were put on the leopards before graduation were supposed to be automatically unfastened after a year of work. After that, the specialists had two ways to get information about the fate of wild cats — field research and footage from camera traps.

The Near-Asian subspecies of the leopard lived in the territory from the North Caucasus to the Red Sea and from the Bosphorus to Pakistan.

However, now the total population of the Central Asian leopard is only one thousand individuals in the wild all over the world: predators live in Iran, Afghanistan, Turkmenistan and a number of other countries. Currently, in the Russian Caucasus, the Near-Asian leopard is found in nature only once every five to seven years, when single individuals of this subspecies enter there.

The program of restoration of the leopard population in the Caucasus is designed for about 20 years. During this time, specialists will have to release at least 20-30 individuals into the wild. In general, about 50 adults and 20 kittens are needed to restore the population.

The objectives of the reintroduction program include creating conditions for further successful breeding and adaptation of young leopards, organizing monitoring, conducting explanatory work with the local population in order to prevent possible future conflict situations between leopards and humans.