This time it really did feel like the end of an era. And what an inglorious end it was, a gruesome mockery of a powerful, stunningly beautiful leopard that had trodden the tea roads and forest paths of the southern Central Highlands for a decade or more. First picked up on our remote cameras in August of 2016 as a solidly built young adult male just entering his prime, we nicknamed him ‘Ozzie’. Now he – or rather what remained of his body - lay in the long grasses, bloated and obscene, like some discarded oversized toy. Only he hadn’t just been discarded, he had been mutilated - decapitated and missing all four paws, with only angry, blackish-red wounds and glistening white bone to indicate where his butchers had hacked.
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