The Island/ANN- Wildlife Department has recorded the presence of a black leopard in Sri Lanka during a research conducted in the major .wildlife reserves in the country.

The images of the leopard was captured by a camera placed in the forest.

Earlier it was believed that the species was extinct in the country. Malaka Abeywardena, a veterinary surgeon attached to the Wildlife Department, said, the leopard, seen in the central hills, is a male.

Abeywardena said, they had received information that there were black leapords living in several places in the central hills and the Sinharaja forest range. The cameras were placed after that.

Earlier parts of carcasses of two black leopards killed by hunters were found in Pitadeniya in Sinharaja and on another occasion the body of another black leopard caught in a trap was found.