Happy Holidays!
If you are celebrating I hope you have a very merry Christmas. And, if you aren’t, best wishes for a happy holiday season and the New Year.
I hope the 2025 is finishing well and you have some exciting travel lined-up for 2026.
The year started strong with a black Indochinese Leopard in Thailand, and ended strong too with my first Leopard Seal on Tierra del Fuego.
In-between it was filled with a fun-filled (and freezing) mole-rat safari through Romania; a stress-filled search for Sato’s Beaked Whales off Hokkaido; a high speed mammal weekend in China; a superb Clouded Leopard in Borneo; a stunning Banded Linsang in Thailand; and an epic adventure through Sulawesi that seems to have unearthed several species new to – or lost by – science (I’m tearing out what little hair I have left trying to finish the trip report). Thank you Jirayu, János, Mari, Frank, Shavez, Carlos & Marcelo for finding them, and to all the friends who came along on those trips.
And that is how 2025 turned into my biggest mammal year ever: 350 species. This impressed me until Ian Thompson told me how many he has seen this year!
Almost 120 of these were lifers. I thought the quest for lifers would get harder but it feels almost the opposite. And that is largely because of all the pioneering work this community is doing uncovering – and sharing – the world’s mammalian secrets one by one. So thank you all. These are exciting times!
Last, but not least, I want to give a shout out to all the tour operators, lodged and guides who advertise on mammalwatching. I know just about all of them personally. Good people who run great trips. And they are supporting this website through their advertising, helping our community to grow. So if you are thinking of where to go next then the Trip Providers Directory is a great place to start.
Next year I’m excited for trips to Northeast Brazil in May (still two spots open), the DRC for Bonobos; and chasing carnivores in Madagascar. There will be more.
What have been your 2025 highlights? And what do you have planned for 2026?
All the best to mammalwatchers near and far. I hope to see you many of you – and many new mammals – next year.
Jon
Cover: a festive Leopard Seal from Tierra del Fuego
Post author
Jon Hall
2 Comments
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Andreas Jonsson
The year highlight for me was a Black Indochinese Leopard in Kaeng Krachan.
The biggest disappointment as usual the missed attempts for Sunda Clouded Leopard and Marbled Cat on Borneo 🙂 Probably another try 2026.No new species of cats for me 2025 which is the first year in a very long time, but it also getting harder and harder. Hope 2026 will bring some. Hopefully already in the end of February when Uganda is booked.
Happy holidays and happy new mammalwatching year!
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Bruno Kovacs Gomez
Hi Jon,
What an amazing year you have had!! (Hopefully mine can be half as good as yours next year 🙂 )
For me, my main mammalian highlights this year have been my first Cantabrian Brown Bears in Somiedo and my first Golden Jackal in Hungary.
Hopefully I can meet you in the near future in a trip .
Happy Holidays !
Bruno