Camera trap sightings raise hopes for rare cheetahs
Wildlife experts are celebrating the sightings of two groups of rare Asiatic cheetahs in central Iran during recent months, raising hopes that one of the world’s fastest moving creatures could be saved from extinction, conservation officials said today.
Iranian wildlife scientists saw four adult cheetahs in August, two months after camera traps revealed a female cheetah with her four cubs resting under the shade of a tree, said Houshang Ziaei, an official of the Environment Protection Organisation of Iran.
Once ranging from the Red Sea to India, the Asiatic cheetah today is only just surviving in the wild. Fewer than 60 exist on the entire Asian continent, mostly on Iran's arid central plateau.
There are thought to be under 10,000 African cheetahs, but the protection for many of them is questionable and their habitat is vanishing.
“The two discoveries of cheetahs are very encouraging,” said Ziaei, who is in charge of a project seeking to protect Asiatic cheetahs in Iran.
The project is being run in conjunction with the United Nations Development Programme and the Wildlife Conservation Society.
The four adults were seen two weeks ago near Naiband, a village in Iran’s central desert, said Ziaei, who is one of the scientists surveying the Naiband cheetahs.
Camera traps set to survey wildlife also photographed an entire family of Asiatic cheetahs in June, including a female and her four youngsters, resting in the shade of a tree in Dareh Anjir, an isolated wildlife refuge in central Iran, said Ziaei.
The two groups are the largest-known of the rare cats to be photographed in Asia, said Ziaei.
Once known as “hunting leopards,” cheetahs have played a significant role in Iranian history, being trained by ancient emperors to hunt gazelles.
In the 1970s, estimates of the number of cheetahs in Iran ranged from 100 to 400. Widespread poaching of the animals and their prey during the early years of the 1979 Islamic revolution, along with degradation of habitat due to livestock grazing, have pushed the predator to the brink of extinction.
The sightings have encouraged Iran’s Environment Protection Organisation, the UNDP and WCS, which joined forces in 2001 to identify cheetahs and their prey, to extend their three-year project until 2007.
“As a species the cheetah is still in dire straits in Iran, so it is extremely encouraging to see an apparently healthy family in their native habitat,” said Dr Peter Zahler, assistant director for WCS’s Asia programs. ”Images like these give hope to conservationists that there is still time to save these magnificent animals.”
