Trail camera films 5 leopards in first-of-its-kind video from Azerbaijan. Take a look
A trail camera in Azerbaijan filmed a brief gathering of five leopards during an ongoing monitoring project. The short video marked a first-of-its-kind sighting for the country — and a conservation milestone for the southern Caucasus region, where leopards were once feared extinct.
The trail camera in the Nakhchivan Autonomous Republic recorded a mother leopard, her three cubs and an unrelated male together in a sunny clearing, the World Wildlife Fund (WWF) Azerbaijan said in a March 2 Facebook post.
The video shows one leopard, likely the male, walking away from a trio of leopards, one standing and two laying in the grass. Moments later, a fifth leopard approaches the remaining trio from a different direction.
The four leopards, likely the mother and her cubs, are seen basking in the sun and occasionally interacting before walking out of the camera’s view.
WWF Azerbaijan said this was the first time five leopards had been filmed together since its monitoring efforts began in 2007.
The group’s conservation efforts in Azerbaijan and neighboring Caucasus countries focus on the Caucasian leopard, or Persian leopard, “the world’s largest leopard subspecies” and an at-risk animal, WWF said.
Leopard populations in the Caucasus declined drastically throughout the 1900s due to the big cats being viewed “as pests and detrimental to agricultural and livestock production,” as well as a government-sponsored “bounty system,” which encouraged the “systematic extermination of leopards,” the organization said.
“This decline appeared so severe that from the 1960s until the end of the 20th century when WWF started its investigations, the majority of scientists really doubted the existence of the species in most parts of the Caucasus,” the organization said in a 2020 project summary.
But the leopards had survived and, after almost 20 years of sustained conservation work, their populations have “significantly improved,” the report said.
The sighting of five leopards in Nakhchivan Autonomous Republic is an example of such progress.
Nakhchivan Autonomous Republic is an exclave of Azerbaijan, separated from the rest of the country by a distance of about 20 miles at the closest points. The landlocked exclave is bordered by Armenia, Iran and Turkey.
Google Translate was used to translate the Facebook post from World Wildlife Fund Azerbaijan
This story was originally published March 6, 2025 at 7:15 AM with the headline "Trail camera films 5 leopards in first-of-its-kind video from Azerbaijan. Take a look."
