Authorities in northeast China's Jilin Province have found signs of a critically endangered leopard subspecies.
A dead roe deer was spotted last week in a tree farm administered by Tianqiaoling Forestry Bureau, when forest worker Xu Degui was picking mushrooms there. Judging from the scratches and the remaining corpse, experts concluded that it was killed by an Amur leopard, also known as the Far Eastern leopard.
It is not the first time that Amur leopards have been found at the tree farm. In July 2009, forestry experts twice found footprints belonging to the animal. Two months later, Amur leopards were found to have attacked domestic sheep there. In 2014, an Amur leopard was spotted eating a roe deer there.
As one of the world's most endangered species, the Amur leopard was put under top national protection in 1983. There are fewer than 70 Amur leopards in the world, mostly living in Russia's Far East, China's northeastern provinces of Jilin and Heilongjiang, and the northern part of the Korean Peninsula.
