Two male leopards crossed 100 kilometers of roads, farmland, and villages last year to reach eastern Heshun County. Trail cameras caught every step of their journey from the protected core zones of the Taihang Mountains into territory where their species hadn’t been seen in decades.
That trek tells a bigger story unfolding across Shanxi Province. The North China leopard, locally called the “golden coin leopard” for its distinctive spotted coat, has returned to mountains where it vanished for nearly 20 years.
Wildlife officials have now identified 222 individual leopards across the province through camera trap analysis. The cats appear at 24 of 35 monitoring sites, according to Wang Yifei, director of wildlife protection for the Shanxi Forestry and Grassland Bureau. Nine leopards have been documented crossing between protected areas, a critical sign that isolated populations are reconnecting.
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The Collapse
Wei Shuanbing saw the decline firsthand. The 51-year-old Taihang Mountains resident remembers when leopard sightings were routine before the mid-1980s.
“For almost two decades until around the 2000s, I never saw a single leopard,” Wei told researchers. Illegal poaching gutted the population. Coal mining operations tore through mountain habitat. Road construction fragmented what remained. Deforestation eliminated the forest cover these cats need to hunt and breed.
The subspecies, found only in China, retreated to the most inaccessible peaks of the Taihang range. By the early 2000s, many assumed they were gone from Shanxi entirely.
What Changed
China’s 1999 logging ban stopped the hemorrhaging of forest habitat across the Loess Plateau. Authorities confiscated private rifles. The Three-North Shelterbelt Forest Program began replanting degraded areas on a massive scale.
Those policy shifts gave the leopards breathing room, but another problem emerged. As populations began recovering in the 2010s, cats started taking livestock. Between 2015 and 2018, leopards killed 173 head of cattle and sheep in and around Tieqiaoshan Nature Reserve alone.
For villagers who depend on cattle keeping for 57% of their income, those losses weren’t sustainable. Some threatened retaliatory hunting.
The Chinese Felid Conservation Alliance responded in 2015 with “Buy Steak for Leopards,” a compensation program that reimburses villagers for predation losses.
“Ecological compensation is the most direct way to solve these problems and reduce the risk of hunting,” said Song Dazhao, one of the conservation group’s founders.
Recovery Numbers
The data shows the turnaround. A Beijing Normal University study tracked an 800-square-kilometer area between Shaanxi and Gansu provinces. Leopard numbers jumped from 88 individuals in 2016 to 110 in 2017, a 25% increase in one year.
In Tieqiaoshan Nature Reserve, researchers calculated density at 4.23 leopards per 100 square kilometers. Each male typically claims about 60 square kilometers of territory, with females occupying roughly 30 square kilometers.
The nationwide population remains under 400 individuals. Most clusters contain fewer than 50 animals, putting them at continued risk in some regions. But Shanxi’s leopard population in the Taihang and Lyuliang mountain ranges now represents one of the strongest concentrations.
The Road Problem
Roads remain the biggest threat to expanding populations. Between 2017 and 2021, vehicles killed at least three leopards in Shanxi and Sichuan provinces. In May 2017, a subadult male died on a mountain road in Lingchuan County after leaving protected habitat to search for territory.
Dr. Liu Baozhuang of the National Forestry and Grassland Administration’s Feline Research Center explained that young males take these risks as populations grow. “As the population of the North China leopards increases, more leopards will continuously spread from the protected areas to surrounding areas,” he said.
Conservationists in Heshun County spent two years fighting a proposed road upgrade through leopard habitat. In 2022, local government agreed to install animal crossing structures instead.
Building Corridors
The “Oaks for Leopards” initiative launched in April 2025 takes a broader approach. Beijing, Hebei, and Shanxi provinces committed to planting 10 million oak trees across the Taihang and Yanshan mountains over the next decade.
Acorns feed roe deer, squirrels, and rabbits. Those prey species support leopard populations. The trees also create connected forest cover, allowing leopards to move between fragmented habitats without crossing open ground or major roads.
The project targets four habitat corridors and five core habitat areas. Officials plan to reduce human interference in these zones while promoting genetic exchange between isolated groups.
A scientific research base for North China leopard conservation opened at Tieqiaoshan Nature Reserve in 2024, affiliated with the Feline Research Center of National Forestry and Grassland Administration. The facility coordinates monitoring across multiple provinces and analyzes movement patterns.
Beijing’s Wait
The leopards are moving closer to the capital. In 2019, camera traps captured individuals in Chengde, Hebei Province, just 100 kilometers north of Beijing. The last confirmed sighting within the city limits was in the 1970s.
Wildlife officials expect a young male will be the first to reappear in Beijing as he searches for unclaimed territory. Establishing a breeding population there will take far longer. Females are more cautious about dispersal, and successful reproduction requires stable prey populations and minimal human disturbance.
Song Dazhao argues that provincial conservation plans, while helpful, can’t solve problems that cross boundaries. Ecological corridors need extensive research, multi-province cooperation, and sustained funding. “Now is the time for a national-level conservation plan for the leopard,” he said.
What the Comeback Means
The 222 leopards now documented in Shanxi represent more than population numbers. They show that degraded mountain ecosystems can recover when hunting pressure stops, forests regrow, and human-wildlife conflict gets managed rather than ignored.
The Loess Plateau, one of the most degraded landscapes on the planet after centuries of overuse, now supports a growing population of apex predators. That recovery happened alongside continued human habitation, not by removing people from the land.
Wei Shuanbing, who watched the leopards disappear from his mountains and then return decades later, has seen both versions of the story. The cats moving through the Taihang range today are walking proof that the second chapter doesn’t have to repeat the first.
