Are These in Captivity? #2

JVM said:
I believe there are only Amur leopards in the AZA at present. Persian leopards are still extant but I don't believe they are held for public display anymore and instead are at sanctuaries; their most recent holder was the Exotic Feline Breeding Compound in California. I know Lincoln Park was one of the few public holders twenty years ago.

The only purebred African leopards in the United States recently were held at the Maryland Zoo in the nineties; there are some zoos that still hold hybrid leopards which are often signed as African, and some zoos that hold Amur leopard use them as ambassadors for the more famous African leopard, since the Amur subspecies is more endangered.
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In some good news, Fort Worth Zoo just got two pure African Leopards, one is a melanistic though. They responded to a comment I posted on their facebook confirming they pure African Leopards.
 
Aardwolf said:
I believe the last zoo in AZA to have African leopards would have been Columbus, which had the cubs of the pair of Africans at Baltimore

Even before the formation of the Amur leopard SSP, Asian leopards )m(of other subspecies) were more commonly kept than Africans
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That's good to know! I had been told Maryland had been unable to place cubs with another zoo. Glad another facility had that opportunity while it was available.

King of Komodo Dragons said:
Fort Worth Zoo just got two pure African Leopards, one is a melanistic though. They responded to a comment I posted on their facebook confirming they pure African Leopards.
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I would say we need a source to be sure on this. Trust but verify, as the old saying goes.
 
King of Komodo Dragons said:
In some good news, Fort Worth Zoo just got two pure African Leopards, one is a melanistic though. They responded to a comment I posted on their facebook confirming they pure African Leopards.
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The people who reply on zoo Facebook pages are generally PR or office people. If they have been told they are "African leopards" that is what they will confirm. To turn it around a little, if the post had been about Bengal Tigers and someone said "they won't be pure Bengal Tigers" they would similarly reply with "yes, they are pure Bengal Tigers" - because that is just the name they have been given (and quite possibly they may not understand the implication behind "pure" in the context of leopards or tigers, because most people on Facebook to whom they respond are just posting "oh wow so amazing!").

If there are indeed no pure African leopards in the USA then these ones would have to have been imported. The more likely scenario is that they have come from a facility that just calls them "African leopards" in the same vein as "Bengal Tiger".
 
The exhibit is called predators of Asia and Africa. Why go through all the trouble of calling them African Leopards if it makes perfect sense to have Amur Leopards in the area?
https://www.fortworthzoo.org/predators
I don’t understand why they wouldn’t just procure Amur Leopards and put them in the Asian part of the area, but it makes no sense for a respectable institution to lie about having an animal with high conservation value. Really why claim to the public an Amur is a Leopard? It’s nice publicity maybe but is their education department full of cowards? Also why would they make such a big deal about recieving an Amur Leopard? Importing African Leopards is difficult, that may be why they are highlighting the species arrival so much. Fort Worth must have some guts to go out and directly lie about having a species that much.
 
Westcoastperson said:
The exhibit is called predators of Asia and Africa. Why go through all the trouble of calling them African Leopards if it makes perfect sense to have Amur Leopards in the area?
https://www.fortworthzoo.org/predators
I don’t understand why they wouldn’t just procure Amur Leopards and put them in the Asian part of the area, but it makes no sense for a respectable institution to lie about having an animal with high conservation value. Really why claim to the public an Amur is a Leopard? It’s nice publicity maybe but is their education department full of cowards? Also why would they make such a big deal about recieving an Amur Leopard? Importing African Leopards is difficult, that may be why they are highlighting the species arrival so much. Fort Worth must have some guts to go out and directly lie about having a species that much.
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Nobody has said that they have got Amur Leopards and are "lying" about it by calling them African Leopards...
 
I can almost guarantee they simply pulled a Columbus, procuring not-so “African” leopards from a forever undisclosed private facility just for the sake of having something different. They’re not going to openly disclose having generic leopards, similarly to how zoos don’t disclose having generic giraffe or generic tigers. It’s a real shame to see them not supporting the SSP. If they didn’t want Amur leopards, then they should’ve allocated the space for something else.
 
Aardwolf said:
I believe the last zoo in AZA to have African leopards would have been Columbus, which had the cubs of the pair of Africans at Baltimore
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One of the cubs, Ceja, was transferred to the Memphis Zoo. She passed away there in 2019. Her sister, Sita, passed away in Columbus almost three years ago now.
Kudu21 said:
The Dakota Zoo in Bismarck, North Dakota is the only facility in the United States that still houses them.
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Its fortunate that there is an EEP for the species as they are all but entirely absent from North American zoos. Am I right in saying that there are only two musk deer at the Dakota Zoo? I would guess they aren't breeding them.
 
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wild boar said:
I would guess they aren't breeding them. Its fortunate that there is an EEP for the species, though. Is it just the two musk deer at the Dakota Zoo?
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They have four -- a pair and 1.1 offspring. Once the program started to take a turn for the worse, with high infant and adult mortality due to the fractious nature of the species, climatic issues, and inbreeding depression, the decision was initially made to try and export all viable animals to Europe to support the EEP; however, I do not think this was ever successful as it appears almost all of the animals in Europe are descended from the Leipzig stock.
 
Kudu21 said:
They have four -- a pair and 1.1 offspring. Once the program started to take a turn for the worse, with high infant and adult mortality due to the fractious nature of the species, climatic issues, and inbreeding depression, the decision was initially made to try and export all viable animals to Europe to support the EEP; however, I do not think this was ever successful as it appears almost all of the animals in Europe are descended from the Leipzig stock.
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Did San Diego send theirs to Europe within the last year?
 
RatioTile said:
Did San Diego send theirs to Europe within the last year?
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See below:
Kudu21 said:
I do not think this was ever successful as it appears almost all of the animals in Europe are descended from the Leipzig stock.
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The remaining San Diego animals went to Bismarck. The Dakota Zoo was going to serve as the holding facility for the export, and they received the last remaining animals from several other facilities -- including Akron, Bronx, and Columbus -- most of them have just since passed.
 
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