Clouded leopards are among the least studied wild cats, facing habitat loss from deforestation and illegal hunting pressure across their range in South and Southeast Asian forests.
Clouded leopards in fragmented forest habitat face increasing human encounter risk as their home ranges intersect with agricultural areas and logging operations. Hunted animals suffer the acute trauma of trapping and killing methods. Animals that survive in forest fragments face nutritional stress as prey populations decline and travel between fragments exposes them to roads and human settlements. The poorly understood social structure of clouded leopards makes welfare assessment in fragmented populations difficult, but the general pattern of carnivore welfare in fragmented landscapes — higher conflict mortality, nutritional stress, and social disruption — likely applies.