Big cats

Hunting the critically endangered Anatolian leopard will result in a 1.2 million Turkish Liras fine, the General Directorate of Nature Conservation and National Parks announced.

The endangered Anatolian leopard (Panthera pardus tulliana), which was last captured in a photo in August 2019 for the first time in the country since 1974, has been spotted once again on Türkiye's lands, the General Directorate of Nature Conservation and National Parks has announced.

The Anatolian leopard, which was last seen in Türkiye in 1975, was spotted on Aug. 8, 2019, since then for the first time when it was thought to be extinct.

The DNA data obtained in the laboratory from the urine sample of the leopard that it left in front of the camera was registered to the World Gene Bank as the "Anatolian Leopard" in 2020.

Two Namibian cheetahs relocated to India last year were released into the wild, more than seven decades after the world's fastest land animal was declared extinct in the South Asian country.

"Both cheetahs are doing good," India's Environment Minister Bhupender Yadav tweeted Saturday after the male and female darted from quarantine enclosures of Kuno National Park into the wild.

Villagers living in the Central Anatolian province of Çorum's Bayat district have been living in fear of a "lion" for a while.
Since their livestock has been destroyed by an unknown wild animal recently, those living in Emirhalil village claim that it was a lion that was attacking the herds.

A rare snow leopard captured as it savaged livestock in a remote village in the Indian Himalaya will be sent to a zoo instead of being released, officials said on May 3, triggering outrage from activists.     

Istanbul's first ever Bengal tigers were born on May 12 at Lion Park in the Tuzla district.