Photographs of a leopard snapped by camera traps in forests in Bangladesh's Chittagong Hill Tracts have raised hopes among conservationists working to save the critically endangered species.

Bangladesh's Creative Conservation Alliance, a nonprofit organization, released photos of the leopard emerging from lush green bush, celebrating the "evidence that these elusive big cats still persist" in the forested hills where Bangladesh borders India and Myanmar.

"We have to ensure the protection of the species so that it doesn't become extinct," Creative Conservation Alliance research officer Sourav Chakma told AFP on Thursday.

Leopards are listed as vulnerable as a species globally, according to the International Union for Conservation of Nature, which is headquartered in Switzerland. But they are critically endangered in the South Asian country of more than 170 million people.

Zoologist Monirul Khan of Jahangirnagar University said previous reports of the elusive cats had been based on paw prints and fleeting sightings in the forest.

"As an extremely rare and secretive species, the latest sighting is very significant," Khan said. "It highlights the importance of the remaining natural forest in the Chittagong Hill Tracts as a reserve of wildlife habitat."

The predator was once widely seen in forested areas. Habitat loss, lack of prey and poaching are key contributors to the loss of leopards, experts say.

Bangladesh is also home to tigers, now found only in the vast Sundarbans mangrove forests that straddle the border with India. On the Bangladesh side, the latest survey released in October 2024 recorded 125 tigers, up from 114 in 2019.

Other rare and endangered animals have been captured on film in recent months. In May, wildlife researchers in Africa made history when they snapped a photo of a rare and relatively unknown antelope called the Upemba Lechwe, marking a world first, the BBC reported.

In January, three endangered Bengal tiger cubs were caught on camera in a national park in Thailand for the first time. 

Last winter, a photographer in a California national park captured footage of a Sierra Nevada red fox, a critically endangered species that the Yosemite Conservancy says are "believed to be on the edge of extinction." 

Also in 2024, an endangered jaguar was caught on camera in Arizona.