Three-legged leopard Aren: 250 km from Armenia to Algeti

The footage passed through several people before the animal was identified. According to Mongabay, Tbilisi Zoo director Zurab Gurielidze first sent it to Bezhan Lortkipanidze, co-founder of NACRES. Sergo Tabagari of the National Wildlife Agency was also checking the record, and he called Vazha Kochiashvili, a biologist at WWF Caucasus. Kochiashvili asked whether the leopard had three legs. It did.

The question had a reason behind it. Aren was first recorded in spring 2019 near the village of Areni, by Armenia's Arpa Protected Landscape. At the time he had all four legs. Later that year he was recorded without the lower part of his left front leg. Rangers attribute the injury to a landmine, but the exact cause has not been established.

Leopards on camera-trap footage are usually told apart by their individual spot patterns. Aren, however, carries a mark that shows on a frame even without comparing spots: the missing limb. That is why one short question was the first step in linking the Algeti animal to an individual known from Armenia.

In 2022 he disappeared from the records. In 2024 he turned up about 130 km to the north, in the Ijevan forest. By September 2025, when he reached Algeti in Kvemo Kartli, he had covered at least 250 km. On a map, the route reads as three points: Arpa in southern Armenia, Ijevan in north-eastern Armenia, and Algeti in Georgia.

“At least” matters here. Only the points where cameras caught him are known. The path between them, and how long he spent on each stretch, are not.

Mongabay and WWF Caucasus describe the Algeti footage as only the third confirmed record of the Persian leopard (Panthera pardus tulliana) in Georgia in the last 20 years.

The species Panthera pardus is Vulnerable on the IUCN Red List, and the subspecies P. p. tulliana was assessed as Endangered in 2023. Georgia's 2014 Red List lists the leopard as Critically Endangered (CR) because the population is very small.

The first story belongs to Vashlovani. In 2003, leopard tracks were found there. They belonged to a male who was named Noe and who was recorded on camera traps until 2009. The second: in 2021 and 2022, camera traps recorded a leopard in Tusheti. The third is Aren.

All three are single animals. These records do not mean that a leopard population has recovered in Georgia. They show that individual wandering leopards appear on Georgian territory from time to time. Noe and Aren are both males. IUCN's 2023 assessment also states that the Caucasus population is not yet stable: wide-ranging males turn up, but females and breeding remain insufficient. The species profile is here: leopard.

At the end of April 2026, the cameras in Algeti were taken down. They had recorded red deer, wild boar, lynx, wildcat and wolf, but there was no sign of Aren.

No camera record does not prove that an animal has left. It only means it did not pass in front of the cameras during that time. That is why “the trail went cold” is the accurate wording here: neither his departure nor his staying has been confirmed.

Bezhan Lortkipanidze suggests the leopard may have headed towards Turkey. That is a hypothesis, not an established fact. The sources this article relies on contain no newer record of Aren after Algeti.

His current location, age, weight and health are unknown.

Aren is not an exception. Since 2002, WWF has recorded 10 leopards in Armenia, and three of them were missing a limb.

Mongabay's reporting names hunters and landmines among the threats Persian leopards face. Landmines and traps are two commonly cited explanations for a lost limb. A camera-trap frame, however, does not show what caused an injury. In Aren's case, the rangers' explanation is a landmine, but the cause has not been confirmed. For the same reason, the three injured animals cannot each be tied to a specific cause.

What the records do show is that Aren lived with the injury for years after 2019 and still covered hundreds of kilometres.

Aren's route shows why ecological corridors matter. A leopard needs a large area, and in Georgia its records sit in separate protected areas: Vashlovani, Tusheti and Algeti. A journey like Aren's does not fit inside a single protected area and spans two countries.

A corridor here means a continuous strip of suitable habitat that lets an animal move from one place to another. Where such strips survive, wandering individuals can arrive from neighbouring populations. Where they are cut, protected areas remain isolated from one another.

Following such an animal takes resources. According to Mongabay, NACRES currently works with only three permanent staff. There is no dedicated monitoring programme for Aren; in Lortkipanidze's words, it happens only out of “goodwill”.

IUCN's 2023 assessment puts the number of remaining Persian leopards at 750–1,044 individuals, of which 450–626 are mature, with a declining trend. For a subspecies this small, the path of each wandering animal is useful information. More Georgian mammals are in the atlas.

Confirmed: in September 2025, a leopard was recorded in Algeti National Park. Mongabay and WWF Caucasus identify it as Aren, an animal known in Armenia since 2019 and missing part of a front limb. The National Wildlife Agency's notice of 17 September 2025 does not name the animal. On the cameras taken down at the end of April 2026, Aren no longer appeared.

Not established: the exact cause of the lost limb; the route Aren took between records; where he is now, and whether he really is heading towards Turkey. The sources also contain no data on whether Aren has any chance of meeting another leopard in Georgia or neighbouring areas.

On 22 July 2026, Armenia's environment minister shared a video of a leopard recorded by a camera trap in Khosrov Forest State Reserve. The individual was not identified, so this record should not be attributed to Aren. It is one more confirmation of leopards in Armenia, not news of Aren's whereabouts.