"Mountain lions go where the deer are found," Morse said. "If you have a pretty green lawn and garden with nice vegetables and fresh water available, you are going to attract deer. And that will attract mountain lions."

A senior Gujarat forest official has now put it on record that the state forest department manipulated data on lion deaths in Gir forest to show unnatural deaths as natural ones.

Despite a profound lack of contemporary scientific information about the population status of wild leopards in Africa, the United Nations meeting yesterday supported proposals to establish or increase leopard trophy export quotas for two African nations. CITES delegates in The Hague approved a proposal by Uganda to export 28 leopard trophies annually; Mozambique was allowed to double their quota from 60 to 120 leopard trophies annually.

"Despite a profound lack of contemporary scientific information about the population status of leopards in Africa, the meeting supported proposals to establish and increase leopard trophy export quotas," commented Will Travers, the chairman of the Species Survival Network.

On Tuesday at the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species (CITES) at the Hague, Uganda was given permission to restart trophy hunting of leopards. According to reports from the function the decision was justified on the strength of 20-year-old data.

Two poachers were nabbed in Chhattisgarh when they were allegedly striking a deal with a decoy customer for a leopard skin.

The cheetah researcher, who has a degree in zoology and extensive experience studying animal behaviour and working in zoos designing animal enclosures, gives another, more depressing statistic - that of the countries where cheetahs have become extinct since 1940 - Jordan, Iraq, India (the country that gave the cat its name), Israel, Morocco, Syria, Oman, Saudi Arabia, Tunisia, Djibouti, Ghana, Nigeria, and Khazikstan as recently as 1989.

That is a critical piece of knowledge as biologists and public agencies increase efforts to re-introduce large carnivores to places where they have been exterminated.

The group said rampant poaching has emerged as one of the biggest threats. "To combat this, the wildlife crime bureau must immediately become a strong and operational entity, staffed with trained personnel at all levels, including anti-poaching units at the ground level."

The estimation of tiger population in the famous Kalakad-Mundanthurai Tiger Reserve (KMTR) in Tamil Nadu was unrealistic and unscientific and has been made without complying with the Centre's guidelines, the Comptroller and Auditor General of India (CAG) has said.

DOES tiger bone wine work? Sheng Helin, a mammal expert at East China Normal University and co-author of The Mammalia of China, has evaluated the medicinal use of tiger bone.

The reappearance of the Xiongsen tiger bone wine on the market last year — and persistent reports that tiger meat is available in Guilin — are warning signs to the international conservation movement that more than a decade of successful suppression of trade in tiger products might be unravelling.

A senior government official on Thursday sharply reacted to China's reported plans to review its 14-year-old ban on trade in bones from captive-bred tigers for traditional medicines and vowed to oppose the move.

A Chinese official in charge of wildlife conservation has said an international ban on trade in tiger parts for traditional medicine will not last forever, a state-run newspaper reported on Tuesday.

The South China tiger is the most endangered of all tiger subspecies, so when it comes to protecting it, there's not much margin for error.

Expressing surprise over the reports that China was planning to lift its ban on trade in tiger parts, India has sought clarification from a UN forum in which China a few days ago had pledged to the contrary.

A U.N. wildlife conference rebuked China on Wednesday for reviewing a 1993 ban on domestic trade in tiger parts amid fears that any sales could drive wild cats to extinction.

"This research shows that more of the male cheetah population are contributing to the next generation than we had expected," explained Dr Sarah Durant, ZSL author and Serengeti Cheetah Project lead.

Cheetah are listed as Vulnerable on IUCN's Red List list of threatened species. The effective breeding population is estimated to be below 10,000 individuals due to habitat destruction and hunting.