Using the phrase “Black Panther” covers many felines, from the above melanistic jaguar from South America, shown here in a public domain photograph, to melanistic leopards from Africa and Asia. The term has also been used to indicate the reported cryptids from many locations, including New Zealand.

A new documentary film is being made in New Zealand, which will discuss the sightings of the “Mid-Canterbury panther.” The black cat has been seen by local residents around Mayfield, Mount Somers and Ashburton, New Zealand.

No indigenous melanistic or black felids are known from New Zealand. But several reports exist, including from as recently as August 2006. But are some of the sightings merely feral domestic felids, as one videotaped in 2003 appears to be?

The new film is being made by documentary filmmakers Mark Orton and Pip Walls. They have interviewed eyewitnesses, Conservation Department staff and an unnamed Australian cryptozoologist. (I’ve received word from the guy himself, Mike Williams who says he is the unnamed cryptozoologist who was filmed for this documentary.) Orton, studying for a degree in natural history filmmaking, has the support of Natural History New Zealand. The film is to be finished for a May screening.

Mark Orton says on his his blog on November 27:

Yes, its official Pip and myself are producing a documentary based on the mystery black cat of Mid-Canterbury. This is one story that refuses to die and to date nobody has focused on some of the important facts and asked the right questions. In our research we have uncovered some fascinating information, and are quite excited about the filming that we have planned for the next couple of months. Watch this space.

Contact him there, if you are in New Zealand and are an eyewitness.

In one case they have documented:

Mount Somers resident Andrea Thompson said she was in her garden about 6.30pm in October last year [2005] when a big black cat dragged a young lamb across a paddock. She was alerted by loud bleating from a ewe. Thompson screamed and the cat ran off after it dropped the lamb, which later died.

“It flew over the fence. I’ve never seen anything like it in my life. It ripped the lamb,” she said.

The cat was about the size of a five to seven-month labrador dog, but unmistakably it was a cat. “Its tail was very long,” she said.

See the December 8, 2006, source article here, for the complete item.