Spotted: endangered leopard in Bangladesh

Dhaka: Photographs of a leopard snapped by camera traps in forests in Bangladesh s Chittagong Hill Tracts have raised hopes among conservationists wor...

Dhaka: Photographs of a leopard snapped by camera traps in forests in Bangladesh's Chittagong Hill Tracts have raised hopes among conservationists working to save the critically endangered species.

Bangladesh's Creative Conservation Alliance (CCA) issued pictures of the leopard emerging from lush green bush, celebrating the "evidence that these elusive big cats still persist" in the forested hills where Bangladesh borders India and Myanmar.

"We have to ensure the protection of the species so that it doesn't become extinct," CCA research officer Sourav Chakma told AFP on Thursday.

Leopards are listed as vulnerable as a species globally, according to the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN), but critically endangered in the South Asian country of more than 170 million people, warning its population may no longer be viable.

Zoologist Monirul Khan, of Jahangirnagar University, said previous reports of the elusive cats had been based on paw prints and fleeting sightings in the forest.