Creature record / 2025
Thursday, 19 June 2025. Shortly after 10 pm. A man walking in the Shumen Plateau Nature Park, high above the city of Shumen in north-eastern Bulgaria, filmed something moving in the distance. A black silhouette. A long tail. He reported it. Within a day, a crisis headquarters was running. A BG-Alert warning went out. Checkpoints sealed the plateau, and experts named the animal a black leopard. Traps, drones, thermal cameras and camera traps followed. Paw prints turned up 50 metres from the steps of a national monument. Then the trail went cold, and the sightings drifted north, across the Danube into Romania.
The Shumen Plateau rises above Shumen in north-eastern Bulgaria. On Ilchov bair hill, about 6 km from the city, stands the Monument to the Founders of the Bulgarian State. Around it lies the Shumen Plateau Nature Park. Rocky ridges. Caves. Terraces. The regional inspectorate had no wild cats on its records.