Today Wild Cats World and Wanicare Foundation/Chikananga Wildlife Center will have another meeting to discuss the progress of the Javan leopard Release Program. We will discuss new ideas, plans and possibilities to achieve what’s best for the Javan leopard species and especially for the three wild-captured leopards (Dimas, Sawal and Ciemas) in the Rescue Center that are still waiting to be released.
We told you earlier that as much as we love to release them ‘yesterday’, it is not quite as simple. Many wild leopards are being caught due to conflicts with humans and their rapidly decreasing natural habitat. The problem right now is that there’s no space left in the rescue center to give home (preferably temporarily) to the caught leopards. Instead they will go to a zoo, with no chance to be ever released again for sure.
Because a safe habitat for release is difficult to find, we would like to increase better medium-term enclosures for more leopards, but that means having lots of new camps and enclosures built. Alas, this is a very costly business as we know only too well of the S.A. projects where we gave the best possible space to the 4 African leopard ambassadors (all born in captivity). The question also is if it is wise to invest so much money in infrastructure at the Rescue Center, as we also need it big time to make the releases possible.
So we have lots of things to contemplate, to discuss and decide about. We hope to be able to come to some decisions in the meeting today.
Thank you for this new update. It must be really hard to decide how to proceed with the project. Even though I believe everyone, who understands the situation, knows that you can’t just release the wild-captured leopards somewhere and cross your fingers that things go well, the leopards have now been held in the rescue center for quite some time and I can imagine that everyone involved in the project would just love to see them finally returned to where they belong. I completely understand that a realistic approach has to be taken into consideration and building better medium-term enclosures for more leopards seems like a right thing to do. It’s just so sad that there is now so many people on Java, so little leopard natural habitat (and therefore so many opportunities for human-leopard conflicts) that it is extremely hard to safely return a wild-captured leopard into its home jungle. Seeing how much the jungle areas on Java have been reduced in the past decades is almost heartbreaking I would say.
Anyway, I trust you will try to come to the best possible conclusion/s during your meeting.