China's state apparatus believes the country's pandas must be saved at all costs. Sri Lanka pays fishermen to protect rare sea turtles. And the Dominican Republic has a parrot team dedicated to saving the Sisserou parrot.
All over the world, governments strive to preserve "flagship species" that are pushed into service as symbols of national pride. So why is Russia building a US$12 billion oil pipeline through the habitat of the world's rarest big cat?
With its long, slender legs and shaggy coat, the Amur leopard is a predator that stalks the frozen forests of far eastern Russia.
Naturalists say its beauty and endangered status -- there are only 30 or 40 left in the wild -- make it an ideal candidate to be a flagship.
But Moscow seems deaf to environmentalists' protests that a trans-Siberian oil pipeline planned to run straight through the leopards' last wild haven could wipe them out.
The 3,000km pipeline, intended to supply oil to Japan, was to have run from the tip of Lake Baikal to the Pacific port of Nakhodka.
But an abrupt announcement late last year made clear that a minor diversion would take the route straight through the leopards' habitat.
Campaigners in Vladivostok say the decision by the state-owned pipeline monopoly, Transneft, is "catastrophic."
Construction begins soon and the pipeline will pass through the border zone of the Unesco-designated Kedrovaya Pad biosphere reserve on the Pacific coast, where the cats live, at a pristine bay near Vladivostok, called Perevoznaya. Cynics have speculated that local politicians in the East, who approved the route, have snapped up land near the bay and aim to benefit from contracts for construction of an oil terminal and port services funded by Japanese soft loans.
"Like a lot of Russia's ambitious projects, this pipeline plan is largely motivated by bureaucrats who are sure of a slice of the profits," says Alexei Yaroshenko, of Greenpeace in Moscow.
Sergei Darkin, governor of Primorye, the territory where the leopards live, denies accusations that he could benefit from kickbacks if construction contracts go to his associates.
The plight of the leopards is being seen as a test case for Russia, where the environment is often trampled in a rush for commercial profit.
Opponents say the pipeline will not only disrupt the leopards but tear through a unique ecosystem that supports rare and endangered species. Kedrovaya Pad is a richly forested valley home to Chinese sparrowhawks and Hodgson's hawk eagles.
While the Western end of the pipeline may not be finished for several years, a new railway to carry oil along the same route will cause equal destruction until it is completed. "All the disturbance -- the smells, the machinery, the swathe cut through their woodland -- will drive the leopards out of their habitat," says Vitaly Gorokhov, head of Ecoyuris, a group of lawyers fighting the plans.
The Amur leopard is the northernmost of the eight leopard sub- species, and lives only in a small corner of the Far East near the Sino-Russian border. It feeds on roe and sika deer, as well as hares and badgers. There are about 100 of the leopards in captivity for breeding purposes, but Kedrovaya Pad is their last wild habitat.
Experts say that, if driven away, the leopards will be forced into terrain where there is no prey to feed on, or towards densely populated areas of China, where the animals are hunted for use in medicines.
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