India's tiger conservation body said 126 of the endangered big cats died in 2021, the most since it began compiling data a decade ago.

The previous highest number of deaths per year before the National Tiger Conservation Authority (NTCA) began compiling data in 2012 was in 2016, when 121 perished.

India is home to around 75 percent of the world's tigers.

It is believed there were around 40,000 tigers at the time of independence in 1947 but hunting and habitat loss has slashed the population to dangerously low levels.

In 2010, India and 12 other countries signed an agreement to double tiger numbers by 2022.

Last year, the government announced that it had reached the target ahead of schedule, with an estimated 2,967 tigers in 2018 versus a record low of 1,411 in 2006.

The number is still lower than 2002 when the tiger population stood at around 3,700 but Prime Minister Narendra Modi hailed it as a "historic" achievement.

The 2018 data may have been partly down to the survey size, however, which used an unprecedented number of camera traps to identify individual tigers using stripe pattern recognition software.

- 'Natural causes' -

Over the past decade the biggest reason for deaths recorded by the NTCA was "natural causes", but many also fell victim to poachers and "human-animal conflict".

Human encroachment on tiger habitats has increased in recent decades in the country of 1.3 billion people.

Nearly 225 people were killed in tiger attacks between 2014 and 2019, according to government figures.

Kartick Satyanarayan, founder of Wildlife SOS, told AFP deaths due to human-animal conflict were driven by "the fragmentation of the tiger's natural habitat."

"Tigers range over large jungle areas and find it impossible to migrate to other forests without crossing human habitations, increasing chances of conflict," he said.

Critics say that the government has also loosened environmental regulations for projects including mining.

Satyanarayan also said increasing demand for tiger skins and use of tiger body parts in traditional Chinese medicine were some of the major reasons for poaching.

The government has made efforts to manage the tiger population better, however, reserving 50 habitats across the country for the animals.

Conservation group WWF said in a report last year that tigers were making a "remarkable comeback" in much of South Asia as well as Russia and China.

But tigers were still under threat from poaching and habitat destruction and the wild animal populations had fragmented, increasing the risk of inbreeding, the WWF said.

"This has reached critical levels in much of Southeast Asia, where a snaring crisis is decimating wildlife, including tigers and their prey," the group said.

The Indian government's 2020 report meanwhile warned that many tiger populations were confined to small protected areas.

Many of the "habitat corridors" enabling the animals to roam between these areas were at risk due to human activity and development, it warned.

Rare leopard captured in northern Iraq
Dohuk, Iraq (AFP) Dec 31, 2021 - An endangered leopard captured in Iraq's mountainous north had its hind leg amputated on Friday following a trap-inflicted wound, an AFP photographer said.

The Persian leopard, taken in a day earlier in Iraq's autonomous Kurdistan region near the border with Turkey, had injured two people, said Colonel Jamal Saado, head of the environmental protection police in Dohuk province.

Residents of a village near the town of Zakho lost around 20 sheep before realising a leopard was attacking their flocks, he said.

The big cat sustained a wound to its back leg when it was caught in a shepherd's trap, but managed to escape before villagers helped police track it down.

Saado said the leopard was given anaesthetic before it was captured.

"We had two or three similar cases in Arbil province" several years ago, he said, adding that an animal of the same subspecies had previously been found dead near a village in Dohuk province.

Persian leopards are a panther sub-species native to Turkey, Iran, Afghanistan and the Caucasus.

They are extremely rare and have been listed as endangered by the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN).

Fewer than 1,000 are believed to exist in the wild, with another 200 in captivity.

Veterinarian Soleiman Tamr, who conducted the amputation at Dohuk zoo on Friday, said the animal weighed around 90-100 kilogrammes (200-220 pounds).

"We will monitor it for a long time," said the vet, who also heads an animal protection society in Iraqi Kurdistan.

"If it can't be returned to the wild, it will live at the zoo," he said.

Jaguar released in Argentina to help endangered species
Buenos Aires (AFP) Dec 31, 2021 - A jaguar named Jatobazinho was released into a national park in Argentina Friday as part of a program to boost the numbers of this endangered species.

This was the eighth jaguar freed this year into Ibera National Park but the first adult male, said the environmental group Rewilding Argentina, which is behind the project.

Jatobazinho weighs about 90 kilos (200 pounds) and has brown fur peppered with black spots.

He first appeared at a rural school in 2018 in Brazil, looking skinny and weak after crossing a river from Paraguay.

The big cat spent a year in an animal refuge in Brazil until he was sent to a jaguar reintroduction center operating since 2012 in Argentina's northeast Corrientes province, where the species had been extinct for 70 years.

Sebastian Di Martino, a biologist with Rewilding Argentina, said that as the jaguar needed to be nice and relaxed as it left its enclosure and entered the wild.

"If the animal is stressed it can become disoriented and end up anywhere," he said.

He said these jaguars were fed live prey while in captivity because they have to know how to hunt.

In the Ibera park, there is plenty of wildlife for them to feed on such as deer.

The jaguars are tracked with a GPS device they wear.

There are plans now to release a female that was born at the reintroduction center.

The park is also awaiting the arrival of three wild jaguars from Paraguay, and two more raised in captivity in Uruguay and Brazil.

Jaguars are native to the Americas.

It is estimated there were more than 100,000 jaguars when Europeans arrived in the 15th century, their habitat ranging from semi-desert areas of North America to the tropical forests of South America.

Conservation groups say the jaguar population of South America has fallen by up to 25 percent over the past 20 years as deforestation eats up their habitat.

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