Has anyone here killed or have seen a black leopard in the wild?

If you have pictures please post them

Wildlife Artist

This is the only picture I have. It was taken about 1990 in what was then our Gura Farda Elephant concession. Ethiopia has a 20% incidence of melanistic leopard. Quite a few black serval too and I once saw a black genet cat. We only take 3 leopard per year in our Mt.Nyala concessions but Americans cannot import them so it's mostly European clients. We've had several say they were going to hold out for a black one but when a big Mr. Spots starts feeding in broad daylight we have yet to have one turned down to wait for a black one.
Anyway, here's a younger Nassos Roussos and our client of many safaris, Crescente Vergara with what is likely to be Crescente's best ever shot!



Rich Elliott

Thanks Mr. Elliott for taking the time to reply.

Thanks is a extremely beautiful Leopard!

You mentioned that USA clients can not inport leopards. Is that limited to black ones or all of them?

Are there any other animals from your hunting areas that can not be imported into the US?

Thanks for your time
Steve

Wildlife Artist,

In 1977 when the US F&W sent out paper work for the range states to fill out and return for documentaion for allowing the import of leopard in to the USA, Ethiopia was in the middle of a Communist revolution and there was no one there with the gumption (read balls) to fill out the form. It's perfectly okay with CITES but the antiquated Endangered Species Act keeps them out of the USA. To my knowledge,no mention is made on CITES or ESA about melanistic phases in any species. In Jan. of 2004 the US CDC issued a ban on importing genet because of the SARS scare. Now here's a black serval I shot in the Tepi concession in 1988.


Rich Elliott