An important and symbolic event took place on the eve of the event dedicated to the 10th Anniversary of the Caucasus Wildlife Refuge (CWR). In September 2021, a trap camera at the CWR area caught a leopard named Nova, which has been monitored in the CWR areas for a year now. The fact that the new leopard is observed in the same area indicates that the CWR is a safe place for the leopard. This is a great achievement in the preservation of Armenia’s nature and fauna.
Nova was first filmed in the CWR area in the fall of 2020. The support of our partners, such as World Land Trust, Viva-MTS, ARTIS Amsterdam Royal Zoo, IUCN NL and others, is invaluable in the activities of the Caucasus Wildlife Refuge.

The idea of privately protected areas is widely used around the world, and in Armenia this role has been taken over by CWR, which is a new concept among the protection models used in Armenia so far.
In the IUCN Red List of Threatened Species (ver. 3.1), the species is categorized as Near Threatened NT and the subspecies as Endangered EN C2a(i). According to IUCN criteria categorized as Critically Endangered CR C2a(i); D. The most imminent threat to leopard survival is range fragmentation caused by poaching and other human activities.