The mist-covered tea estates, forest patches and mountain valleys of Sri Lanka’s hill country support some of the country’s most important leopard populations outside protected areas. Yet the same landscapes have emerged as the deadliest places for the threatened big cats of Sri Lanka.

A new study analyzing 17 years of leopard mortality records has found that nearly 40% of recorded leopard deaths occurred within a single district of Sri Lanka’s Central Highlands, the tea-growing Nuwara Eliya, which accounts for only 4.4% of the species’ estimated range.

To read the full story visit https://news.mongabay.com/2026/06/sri-lanka-leopard-deaths-prevalent-in-region-where-humans-and-big-cats-overlap/

Photo credit: Yanik Tissera