Global Forum for Sports and Environment
Sochi welcomes leopards from Iran
The program of recruitment of this rare species of leopards (Panthera pardus tulliana) has been one of the priority areas of Sochi 2014’s environmental plan and unites the activities of the Russian Natural Resources Ministry, the A.N. Severtsov Institute of Ecology and Evolution, and the World Wide Fund. In 2009 a special reintroduction centre was created to promote the leopards’ breeding in captivity and to encourage the release of their adapted offspring into the territory of Caucasian biosphere reserve. The scientists hope that in future, the leopards will continue to produce offspring and thus renew the population of these animals destroyed in the Caucuses. The prime minister of Russia, Vladimir Putin, has come in person to let the Iranian spotted guest into the cage. This follows the IOC Coordination Commission’s second visit last year , when Vladimir Putin together with the Chairman of the IOC Coordination Commission Jean-Claud Killy, and IOC Executive Director for the Olympic Games Gilbert Felli, let the first animals (two males, a present from the Turkmen leadership) into the cage in the National Park. Source: Sochi 2014 LINK : |
4 may 2010--As part of the ecological program for the Sochi Winter Games a female leopard, specially delivered from Iran, has been released into a new cage in the Sochi national park.