Chasing the leopard's tail

摘要

Learning enough about Oman's elusive Arabian leopard to prevent it from disappearing into the realms of myth and legend requires intrepidity, persistence - and a very clever camera-trap. When I first met David Willis, he was obsessed. Like a medievalknight in search of the Holy Grail, he had a quest - to find and photograph the Arabian leopard. This small subspecies Panthera pardus nimr once occurred throughout the mountains of southern Arabia, and a small number of specimens were collected by early European travellers. But local records indicated that, due mostly to hunting and loss of habitat to livestock grazing, the leopard had become locally extinct in most areas by 1990 - and that if viable populations remained, they were most likely to be found in the high mountains of Oman and Yemen.