Iranian cheetah news

Arizona Docent

Arizona Docent

Well-Known Member
15+ year member
Here is a nice article from the Guardian about current status of Asiatic cheetahs in Iran.
Cheetahs' Iranian revival cheers conservationists | Environment | theguardian.com
There is a stunning photo of five cheetahs together - a mother with four juvenile cubs! Also some very interesting discussion at the end about how international sanctions in Iran are also crippling conservation funding. Certainly a tricky topic for which there are no easy solutions.
 
I was told the other night in the Chatroom that Asiatic Cheetahs are doing very well in Arabian zoos, is this true?

~Thylo:cool:
 
ThylacineAlive said:
I was told the other night in the Chatroom that Asiatic Cheetahs are doing very well in Arabian zoos, is this true?

~Thylo:cool:
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In fact the latest research has shown that the Asiatic cheetahs are far from stable in Iran and under threat from development, road kill and illegal poaching of wildlife and killing of cheetahs. There are only between 45-70 now, whereas a few years ago the number was thought over 100.

Plus the only Asiatic cheetah in captivity are in a semi-captive facility inside central Iran.

So come again? Who / what source told you that Asiatic cheetahs even exist outside Iran in M.E. zoos or private facilities? The UAE maintains a fairly large group of northern cheetah - from which the current EEP for northern cheetahs has been developed -. Other than that there are no cheetahs even remotely related to the Asiatics outside Iran.
 
gerenuk said:
You never know what's being held in those Arab zoological facilities.
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There are a few rarities in Middle Eastern private collections across the Peninsula. These more or less stem from countries and habitats where they are free to roam and collect. As you may be aware Iran and its neighbors are not exactly on good speaking terms and allthough frequent wildlife trade exists for the commoner species (e.g. several wild sheep, chinkara and perhaps the jebeer) the Asiatic cheetah is out-of-bounds altogether.

There has been talk for a long long time to initiate a captive-breeding project with UAE involvement in an advisory role ... it has yet to come to fruition.
 
Politics! I'm not naïve, but it is so frustrating how the past thirty-five years have militated against the conservation of wildlife in Iran. Had events gone differently, there might now be populations of Cheetah and Lion thriving in Iran - and India too, for that matter.
 
Nope we were definitely talking about Asiatic Cheetahs. We had been talking about Cheetah ssp in captivity and such when the topic of Asiatic Cheetahs in Western zoos came up and I was told that the ssp was doing well in captivity in Arabia and that a Western zoo could probably import some if they wanted. I was skeptical of that and it seems it's wrong:(

I also was told there's evidence that A. j. venaticus and A. j. soemmeringii might all just be A. j. venaticus, in which case there would be a lot more wild Cheetahs and there would be a breeding population in Western zoos. He told me that that's partly the reason why a few zoos in the UK went into the ssp in the first place. I'll try and find out more about this when I see him in the chatroom today.

~Thylo:cool:
 
He was thinking about the semi-captive place.

Also, he looked it up and it seems the theory for the Asiatic and Sudanese Cheetahs being the same has been disproved.

~Thylo:cool:
 
Kifaru Bwana said:
There are only between 45-70 now, whereas a few years ago the number was thought over 100.
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This puts them in the same place, population estimate-wise, as they were forty/fifty years ago. I wondered if they have increased and decreased again, or just stayed pretty much the same throughout.
 
Pertinax said:
This puts them in the same place, population estimate-wise, as they were forty/fifty years ago. I wondered if they have increased and decreased again, or just stayed pretty much the same throughout.
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@Pertinax, just prior to Khomeiny stepping in in Iran there were close on 150-200 cheetah in Iran thanks to protection instated in the early 1960's.
During the chaos of the first years of the Islamic Republic central control over protected areas wavered and PA's were invaded with people and livestock and illegal hunting was rife (not just predators, but mainly prey species too). Esp. the hunting of prey species has more or less put a lid on cheetah recovery. Even now it is tenuous as only few PA's are well protected as the ranger forces are not well paid or technically well fitted out.
 
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