Among tigers, leopards, lynx, lions, panthers and other cats, which merits the unwanted title as the world’s most endangered feline?

The question occurred to me because the WWF conservation group said a few days ago that the Iberian lynx, found only in Spain, is the “world’s most endangered cat species”. Extinction would be the first for a feline species since the sabre-toothed tiger vanished about 10,000 years ago.

But another group, the Wildlife Conservation Society (WCS), said in another release that the Amur leopard, which lives in eastern Russia and has long fur against the cold, is the “rarest big cat on the planet”.

So who is right? Is one of them exaggerating? I asked one of the world’s top authorities.

“In fact, both are correct,” said Christine Breitenmoser, co-chair of the Cat Specialist Group of the World Conservation Union, which lists both the Iberian lynx and the Amur leopard as “critically endangered” in a Red List of threatened species.

She said that the Iberian lynx is a distinct “species” of cat — there are four lynx species worldwide. But the Amur leopard, which has long fur against the cold, only counts as a “sub-species” — leopards of the same species are found from the far East to South Africa.

“Among cat species, the Iberian lynx is worst off by far,” she said. “The leopard as a species…is not critically endangered.” But there are fewer Amur leopards than Iberian lynx so it can be called the world’s “most endangered cat”, she said.

The WWF says the sabre-toothed tiger was the last full species to disappear but sub-species such as the Bali tiger – last seen in the 1930s — are also rated extinct.

The WWF said last week that the discovery of a new population of 10 Iberian lynx had raised the total in the wild to about 110. The WCS said experts recently caught and checked the health of a female Amur leopard, one of an estimated 24 to 32 in the wild.

Breitenmoser said that leopards shipped from Africa could breed with the Amur leopard but that it would not help because the Amur leopard has adapted to living in snows. “Breeding alone does not make a success story,” she said.