Return of the North China Leopard
With Jacky Poon
拍摄于中国太行山中部的豹（Panthera pardus japonensis，华北豹），拍摄者：肖诗白、猫盟。
拍摄于中国太行山中部的豹（Panthera pardus japonensis，华北豹），拍摄者：肖诗白、猫盟。
1 × 90-minute feature documentary or 2 × 60-minute miniseries
Wildlife cinematographer Jacky Poon embarks on a personal journey across China to explore a remarkable question: can ecological restoration bring back a lost apex predator?
Beginning in his birthplace, Beijing, Jacky follows reports of North China leopards appearing beyond the capital. His search takes him through recovering forests and communities living alongside these elusive cats, tracing the relationship between China’s environmental transformation and the leopard’s return.
Seeking funding partners.
The Journey
The film begins in the mountains west of Beijing, where a North China leopard was recorded in 2025, just 158 kilometres from the city centre. For Jacky, the sighting raises the possibility that a top predator could return to the doorstep of his hometown.
To understand how this might happen, he looks back to the catastrophic Yangtze River floods of 1998 and the restoration programmes that followed. On the Loess Plateau, he explores landscapes transformed by decades of work to restore degraded land.
Jacky installs camera traps in valleys where leopards once disappeared. Around them, recovering forests support deer, wild boar, birds, and the wider ecosystem a predator needs.
The journey also takes Jacky back to the Hengduan Mountains of Yunnan, where he filmed Yunnan snub-nosed monkeys during his first wildlife assignment in China. He revisits the forests that helped shape his career.
Living Alongside Leopards
In Heshun, Shanxi, known locally as China’s Leopard Village, Jacky encounters another side of recovery.
As leopard populations grow, conflict with farming communities can increase. The loss of a calf can represent months of income. Jacky explores how compensation schemes, eco-friendly agriculture, and community conservation can help people and leopards coexist.
Joining a leopard patrol, he checks camera traps and collects DNA from leopard scat. A decade of camera-trap footage reveals individual cats, family groups, territorial disputes, courtship, and hunting behaviour.
Finally, Jacky returns to the mountains around Beijing. He follows possible wildlife corridors connecting leopards in neighbouring Hebei with the capital’s recovering forests. Roads, development, and fragmented habitats remain obstacles to their return.
A Personal Search
Jacky’s ambition is to capture the first cinematic footage of a wild North China leopard living on the edge of Beijing.
The film combines his perspective as a bilingual British-Chinese filmmaker with specialist wildlife cinematography, custom-built camera traps, night-vision systems, and archive documenting China’s environmental transformation.
His search asks what the leopard’s return could reveal about the future of nature, in China and beyond.
About Jacky Poon
Presenter and Director of Photography
An Emmy-nominated wildlife cinematographer with more than seventeen years of experience, Jacky’s credits include Planet Earth III, Asia, Mammals, Born in China, and Hidden Kingdoms of China. His on-screen appearances include BBC’s Asia, Disneynature’s Expedition China, and BBC’s The One Show.
Production & Funding
Return of the North China Leopard will be a China–UK co-production, with creative partners already on board. The project is conceived as a 90-minute feature documentary or a 2 × 60-minute miniseries.
We are seeking funding partners to help bring the project to the screen.
Please contact Primal Films to request the full project presentation and discuss funding opportunities.
Project contact
