A republican contest for the best children's drawing on the theme “Leopard in Kazakhstan” and a personal name for the leopard, which has been living in Mangistau for a year, was announced

At the end of 2024, staff of the Ustyurt State Nature Reserve, located in the Mangistau region of Kazakhstan, again checked the camera traps installed on its territory within the framework of the international project for the study and protection of the Eurasian leopard, supported by grants from National Geographic and the Segré Foundation and with the participation of Conservation X Labs, BRCC and ACBK. Great news: the leopard has returned to the territory of the Reserve and was recorded 4 times on camera traps from October 29 to December 21, 2024!

Video footage from camera traps installed in the Ustyurt Nature Reserve

The leopard was previously sighted in the Reserve from January to August 2024, and in September and October - in the regional natural park “Kyzylsai” on the territory of Beineu district, approximately 210 km to the north-west of the meeting place in the Reserve. The photo and video materials available to experts allow us to confidently assert that in all cases it was the same young male leopard, which, like the leopard that received its own name Tau-Sheri and lived in Mangistau region in 2018-2021, came to the territory of Kazakhstan from neighboring Turkmenistan, where there is a stable population of this rare predator in the Kopetdag Mountains and the Bolshoi Balkhan Range.

We remind you that earlier, in 2021, the pronghorn leopard was included in the Red Data Book of Kazakhstan, and Mangistau is the only region of Kazakhstan where this unique animal has been regularly observed in recent decades. Due to the fact that the “new” leopard has been residing in Mangistau for a whole year already, our friends and colleagues from the Ustyurt Reserve are planning to announce a regional children's drawing contest dedicated to the leopard in the near future again, as in 2019. In addition, each author of the drawing can offer his or her own variant of a personal name for this leopard.

Biodiversity research and conservation center community trust (BRCC), which is the main implementer of the “leopard” project in Kazakhstan, supports the initiative of the Ustyurt Reserve and in turn, with the support of the Kazakhstan Association for the Conservation of Biodiversity (ACBK), announces a national contest for the best children's drawing on the theme “Leopard in Kazakhstan” and a personal name for the leopard currently living in Mangistau.

Children's drawings and variants of a name for the leopard, as well as possible questions related to the contest, are accepted in electronic (digitized) form to the address: leopard@brcc.kz until April 30, 2025 inclusive, indicating the subject of the message “leopard”. Each drawing must be accompanied by contact information of its author - full name, age (up to 16 years inclusive), postal address with index and contact phone number. The jury will be composed of researchers involved in the study of leopard in Mangistau. The results of the competition and the best drawings will be posted on the BRCC website: https://www.brcc.kz/news/ no later than May 31, 2025. The winners of the competition will receive certificates from the “leopard” project, pocket calendars with original photos of the Eurasian leopard and a colorful manual “Cats of the Deserts of Kazakhstan”, which can already be downloaded electronically: https://www.brcc.kz/2024/06/16/booklet-cats-of-deserts-kazakhstan/.

For more information on the Eurasian leopard and the project to study and protect this animal in Kazakhstan, see the BRCC website: https://www.brcc.kz/en/projects-and-plans/study-and-protection-of-large-cats/ and the 31st (2023) and 32nd (2024) issues of the Kazakh scientific zoological journal “Selevinia”: https://selevinia.kz/.