For the first time in 50 years two Per­sian leop­ard cubs have been born in a Russ­ian national park in a major effort to rein­tro­duce the endan­gered species back to the wild.

The cubs were born in the Per­sian Leop­ard Breed­ing and Reha­bil­i­ta­tion Cen­tre, Sochi National Park in south-​western Rus­sia last week.

“It is too early to tell the sex of the cubs. They’re in the den with their mother and cen­tre staff don’t want to dis­turb them”, said Umar Semy­onov, head of the breed­ing center.

The par­ents, Zadig and Andrea were brought to the park in 2012 from Portugal‘s Lis­bon Zoo.

An aver­age new­born leop­ard is 15cm long and weighs between 500 and 700 grams. Cubs gain sight by the sev­enth or ninth day and by the sec­ond week of their lives start to crawl around the den, leav­ing the den after two months. At first the mother is respon­si­ble for feed­ing the kit­tens half-​digested meat but as they grow they start to eat prey themselves.

The Per­sian leop­ard (Pan­thera par­dus saxi­color) pop­u­la­tion, once wide­spread through­out this moun­tain­ous region between the Black and Caspian Seas, declined dras­ti­cally through­out the 20^th cen­tury due to poach­ing and habi­tat loss. It is believed that only a few leop­ards now live there. The Per­sian leop­ard pop­u­la­tion sta­tus is Endan­gered accord­ing to the IUCN Red List of Threat­ened Species™ with fewer than 1,290 mature indi­vid­u­als believed to live in Iran, east­ern Turkey, the Cau­ca­sus Moun­tains, south­ern Turk­menistan and parts of west­ern Afghanistan.

(Source: WWF Global news, 18.07.2013)