“First phase of cheetah population survey in Naybandan Wildlife Refuge was finished. A total of 45 stations inside the reserve’s core zone were monitored for more than three months to find how many cheetahs exist in the area. As a result, more than 20 images of the Asiatic cheetahs have been obtained which need further analysis to find number of individuals. Besides the critically endangered Asiatic cheetahs, striped hyena was another frequent large carnivore which was present in most of the stations. Also, three species of foxes (i.e. Balnford’s fox, common fox and Ruppelli’s fox), golden jackal, wild cat, caracal, porcupine and ungulates were among species on images.
The next phase of Naybandan’s camera trapping program which has been done in close partnership with the area’s game wardens will continue until end of spring 2013, based on monitoring only 10 identified cheetah trails to understand plausible population changes. As one of the largest reserves in Iran, Naybandan Wildlfie Refuge covers more than 14,000 km2 of arid areas of eastern country which more than 15 different cheetahs have been known to roam the area during past decade. Jangal, known as the oldest Asiatic cheetah ever identified, was an adult male who lived in the area at least 12 to 14 years. The present project has been implementing by the Iranian Cheetah Society (ICS) and Yazd Department of Environment (DoE) in partnership with Conservation of Asiatic Cheetah Project (CACP) and Panthera and Persian Wildlife Foundation (PWF) which each provided several camera traps for the
project.”
Asiatic cheetah walking in the rain