Predator considered locally extinct appears on trail camera in Georgia. See it
As nighttime rains fell on a national park in the Caucasus, an at-risk predator approached a barbed wire fence and limped along it for a few minutes before fading into the shadows. Unbeknownst to it, nearby trail cameras captured its brief appearance.
It turned out to be a rare sighting of a species considered locally extinct.
Conservationists at Algeti National Park in Georgia were reviewing recent trail camera footage from the perimeter of a protected deer breeding facility when something caught their attention, Georgia’s Agency of Wildlife said in a Sept. 17 Facebook post.
Two trail cameras near the perimeter fence had recorded a Persian leopard, officials said.
Leopards have been considered locally extinct in Georgia since the mid-1900s but, in the past 20 years, have occasionally appeared on trail cameras, the agency said. The recent sighting at Algeti National Park is the third such sighting.
Video footage taken Sept. 14 and shared Sept. 17 by the wildlife agency and Georgia’s Ministry of Environmental Protection and Agriculture shows the rare leopard.
The leopard was likely at Algeti National Park for a while before being detected, the wildlife agency said. The protected facility, a site for breeding at-risk Caspian red deer, has 70 trail cameras along its roughly 2.5-mile-long fence — only two of which recorded the leopard.
Wildlife rangers later found some of the leopard’s paw prints and concluded it moves on three legs, the agency said in another Facebook post. The video footage shows the large cat walking with a slight hop and not fully using its front left paw.
Officials don’t know where the Persian leopard came from but noted that its limping behavior is consistent with a 2024 sighting in neighboring Armenia. The Armenia sighting likely involved a leopard that was injured due to a poaching trap or a landmine, the agency said.
Persian leopards, also known as Caucasian leopards, are a subspecies within Panthera pardus and considered vulnerable, according to the World Wildlife Fund Caucasus. Regional conservation efforts for these “powerful and majestic” wildcats have been ongoing for years.
Georgian wildlife officials said they will continue their monitoring efforts at Algeti National Park.
Algeti National Park is in central Georgia, a country in the Caucasus bordering Armenia, Azerbaijan, Russia and Turkey.
Google Translate and Translate GPT, an AI chat bot, were used to translate the Facebook posts from Georgia’s Agency of Wildlife and Georgia’s Ministry of Environmental Protection and Agriculture.
This story was originally published September 18, 2025 at 3:34 PM with the headline "Predator considered locally extinct appears on trail camera in Georgia. See it."
