Ah, the great beauty of spots that walk gracefully and savagely. Those solitary creatures, those who's furs can be found in the illegal market for up to $1000. Found in Russia and China the Amur leopard is CRITICALLY ENDANGERED. How much is this creature endangered? What is "critical"?
There are only 20-25 wild Amur leopards left in this entire world and they only live in Russia. About 12 or so are found in China. All together there are about 35 or so of these creatures left and we must stop this illegal poaching.
So, first you would probably ask why on earth we need to do this? Heck, they could die out for all we care, right?
Wrong. To our delicate ecological system, losing one species leaves this big giant gap that nothing can fill. A huge earthquake of destruction will occur if one species dies out. Each time one goes, each time our delicate balance of life is thrown off. If the Amur leopards go, so does their forest and the prey species (roe deer, sika deer, etc). Everything will be thrown off, you see?
GIMME SOME PICTURES! You might say so here's one from WWF.
http://wwf.panda.org/what_we_do/endangered_species/amur_leopard2/
Aww, what a cutey :)
Apparently, the Amur leopards are getting special treatment from the WWF. They have this Priority Species label. It mean the species is really important to Earth so WWF is making sure that the Priority Species survive in their home-sweet-homes.
Now, here's another picture from WWF. We shall hope it is not the same Amur leopard.
It's from the same website so I'm not gonna put the link.
This is the fur of an adult Amur leopard. Apparently it was found in a private car. Yes, it sure is beautiful but... but... they slaughtered an Amur leopard :(
One that could've even been a mother :(
Here is a devastating photo of a killed...no, MURDERED Amur leopard. It's from a site called ALTA (Amur Leopard and Tiger Alliance).
Amur Leopard and Tiger Alliance Website
If this makes your stomach churn and you feeling like rushing to the toilet, then, good. At least someone's grossed out. If you don't want to see this sort of stuff anymore, tell your friends, tell your neighbors, tell your teachers, spread the word, get it out, make it stop!
Heck, if only I had a group of people with me then I could really get this word out but right now all I have is people like you who happen to stumble upon my blog, or happen to read the whole thing and think, oh, huh, this is interesting, huh. Well, hope you think more than just "huh".
Now that we've covered tigers and Amur leopards almost to the brink, I'll have to think of the next topic. Possibly something about the countries they're from or something. I don't want to offend anyone and have my blog shut down or anything so I'm trying to stay neutral. It's really hard when the people in the country are involved though... Eeesh, don't wanna go into all that stuff :/
Go to
This Place to See What You Can Do
And, yes, you can do something even if you live thousands of miles away from where the Amur leopard lives.
Save us, you can
