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Sedgwick County Zoo Staff Caring For Rare Amur Leopard Cub

Courtesy Sedgwick County Zoo

A rare Amur leopard cub is in intensive care at the Sedgwick County Zoo after staff members determined its mother couldn’t care for it.

The zoo said in a news release Monday that the male cub is “thriving” at the Oliver Zoo Animal Hospital, where it has been since late May. The cub and his two siblings were born to 7-year-old Emerald the evening of May 27, but the zoo said the first-time mother was not interested in caring for the cubs and staff had to intervene. Two of the three cubs were found to have had sustained unintentional injuries while in Emerald’s care and did not survive.

The remaining cub weighed about 1 pound at birth; the zoo said he is now 6 pounds and eating solid foods. He has also been exploring the outdoor areas of the hospital’s small animal ward.

Credit Courtesy Sedgwick County Zoo
The baby leopard in May, shortly after it was born.

The cub is expected to stay at the hospital “for some time” while the zoo works with the Amur leopard Species Survival Plan to determine the next step.

Amur leopards are considered critically endangered. Fewer than 70 remain in the wild in the Russian Far East. More than 200 Amur leopards live in human care in the U.S., Europe and Russia, according to the zoo.

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Nadya Faulx is KMUW's Digital News Editor and Reporter, which means she splits her time between working on-air and working online, managing news on KMUW.org, Twitter, Facebook and Instagram. She joined KMUW in 2015 after working for a newspaper in western North Dakota. Before that she was a diversity intern at NPR in Washington, D.C.