The big cat species could endure the same fate as the country’s tigers, which were declared extinct in 2016.

John R. Platt covers the environment, technology, philanthropy, and more for Scientific American, Conservation, Lion, and other publications.

Cambodia’s population of leopards has fallen to as few as 20 big cats, and the species could be extinct in as little as two years, conservationists have warned.

The news comes just two months after the Cambodian government announced that tigers are extinct in the country and one month after it was revealed that the world’s leopards have lost about 75 percent of their historic range throughout Asia and Africa.

As with Cambodia’s tigers, the leopards’ decline is the result of rampant poaching in the protected forests in Mondulkiri province, their last known habitat in the country.

read more http://www.takepart.com/article/2016/06/06/cambodia-leopards-could-be-extinct-just-two-years

populations can recover from poaching.

it is the destruction of habitat that destroys a population.

Mondulkiri has been heavilly logged.

A protected forest means nothing.