LEOPARD
SAMBURU · SERENGETI · MASAI MARA · LOISABA · LOSHAMI
The search for the leopard
LOISABA CONSERVANCY
LAIKIPIA PLATEAU, KENYA
Of all the animals I photograph in East Africa, the leopard is the one I am never sure I will find.
Lions sleep in plain sight. Elephants announce themselves. Cheetahs hunt in open grassland where the light is clean and the distances long.
The leopard disappears.
It watches from trees with a patience that outlasts yours. It holds a rock in perfect stillness until you have driven past. It yawns wide — an enormous, unhurried display of complete indifference — and then is gone before you have finished looking.
Loisaba is leopard country. The Laikipia Plateau holds some of the last connected leopard corridors in Kenya — terrain that suits them: rocky outcrops, acacia woodland, and enough silence to move through unnoticed if they choose.
I have found them here in trees, watching the conservancy from above. Stretched across boulders in the late afternoon light. Resting with the particular economy of a predator that has nothing to prove.
Each time, I feel the same thing —the specific privilege of being allowed to look. And then, one morning, our guide Lenny heard a rumour.
WHAT THE LEOPARD CARRIES
Of all the animals I have photographed, the leopard is the one most people project onto.
Strength. Stealth. Independence. The ability to move through the world without being seen — and to choose, on their own terms, when to be visible.
I can only tell you what I have observed.
A leopard does not need your attention to exist fully. It is the most solitary of the big cats — no coalition, no pride, no alliance. Just itself, moving through territory it has memorised completely.
Loshami walked toward our jeep and lay down in the sand.
Not because he trusted us. Not because he was tame.
Because he decided the moment
was not worth the energy of avoidance.
That is the symbol. Not mystery for its own sake.
Absolute self-possession.
The leopard moves through the world on its own schedule. It does not announce its presence. It is simply there — or it isn’t.
You are lucky if it decides you are worth the stillness.
The leopard’s adaptability has long made it the least protected of the big cats — the assumption being that
a species so resilient will manage. That assumption is being tested.
The leopard is the most adaptable of the big cats — found across more habitat types than any other large predator. Savannah, forest, mountain, semi-desert. They survive where lions and cheetahs cannot.
And yet they are declining.
An estimated 80,000 leopards remain across Africa and Asia. The number sounds significant until you understand how fragmented their range has become — isolated populations, shrinking corridors, and persistent pressure from hunting and habitat loss.
The melanistic leopard — the black leopard — is rarer still. Loshami was documented at Loisaba in 2018. The first verified sighting of a black leopard in East Africa in nearly 100 years. He still moves through these hills.
Whether you see him depends entirely on him.
Leopards are killed for their spotted coats, for their bones — a growing demand from traditional medicine markets — and as retaliation for livestock predation at the edges of shrinking territory.
The Loisaba Conservancy in the Laikipia Plateau is one of the most important leopard habitats remaining in Kenya. The Seven Sisters — a coalition of conservancies across Laikipia — hold some of the last connected leopard corridors in East Africa.
I photograph there because the land still holds them. And because the land needs people to witness what it holds.
These cats are bound together in this
uncompromising wilderness. Their first weapon is one another.
LOSHAMI
This is the portrait I had one chance to make. I did not know when I drove north that morning that I would find him. I almost didn’t go.
This image exists because my guide Lenny had an instinct. Because Loshami decided to cross the road in daylight and then, inexplicably, to stay.
Spotting a leopard is one thing. Getting close is another entirely. We pulled the jeep to where we thought he had gone. Waited. Then — almost like black magic — he walked toward us. He lay down on the red sand beside the vehicle. Relaxed. Completely unbothered.
The sun was dropping and the light was changing fast. I had one shot at his portrait.
He sat facing the vehicle — broad face, midnight fur, legs stretched in front of him. One claw extended further than the others, pressed into the red sand.
I have never been so still behind a camera. The light fell. The conservancy went quiet around us. And I sat there sharing the end of the day with Loshami — this animal that should have been impossible to find, on a road with no one else on it, in the last of the Loisaba light.
Peaceful, quiet, and mine.
I knew anything was possible from this day forward.
80,000 EST REMAIN
ACROSS ALL HABITAT TYPES, ON TWO CONTINENTS.
THE NUMBER THAT SOUNDS SAFE. ISN’T.
CLAWS OF CORRUPTION
Africa’s silent predators are under threat, shadowed by corruption.
The leopard skin trade operates quietly — skins sold for ceremonial dress, for fashion, for status. A single leopard skin reaches $5,000 or more on the black market.
Bones are increasingly trafficked as substitutes for tiger bone in traditional medicine markets across Asia — a demand that has accelerated as tiger populations collapse and suppliers look for alternatives.
Leopards are also killed in retaliation. A livestock farmer losing animals to a predator operating at the edge of shrinking territory has immediate reasons that outlast conservation arguments.
The solution is not argument. It is making the leopard worth more alive to the communities that live alongside it.
That is what the conservancy model does. That is why I choose to photograph within conservancy land.
Every print argues for that choice.
field notes
The Leopard
Stealthy hunters
Exceptional climbers
Powerful jaws
Nocturnal predators
Solitary creatures
Agile swimmers
Excellent night vision
Haul prey into trees
Rosette-patterned coat
Adapt to nearly any habitat
