Understanding the welfare and conservation challenges facing clouded leopards — among the most elusive and least-studied of the large cats — in increasingly fragmented forest habitats.
Clouded leopard welfare presents unique challenges in both wild and captive settings. In the wild, their extreme habitat sensitivity means that fragmentation and selective logging create welfare impacts through reduced territory quality and increased energy expenditure traveling between habitat patches. In captivity, the historical problem of male aggression toward females during mating has caused significant welfare harm and reproductive failure. The SSP protocol development that now allows successful pair management represents an important welfare science achievement. Supporting habitat protection and fragmentation reduction serves wild clouded leopard welfare by maintaining the contiguous forest territories these animals require.