Miandasht Wildlife Refuge and Touran Biosphere Reserve were the only remaining reproductive Asiatic Cheetah habitats in Iran.
Miandasht Wildlife Refuge, with 84 thousand hectares, was one of the first areas that the Iranian Cheetah Society started working on for conserving the cheetah population. However, it’s been two years since there have been any records of cheetah reproduction there.
Unlike Miandasht, Touran Biosphere Reserve with 1.5 million hectares is the only remaining area with records of cheetah reproduction nowadays, so it is crucial for conserving the only Asiatic Cheetah habitat in the world.
Therefore, the Iranian Cheetah Society started their new project in September of 2020 to include Touran beside Miandasht in the surveys and camera trap to find new individuals. However, we couldn’t do the camera trappings in Touran ourselves because of the official technicalities, so we only gave our council and taught the rangers how to use and install the camera traps.
In both areas, camera traps worked for four months until the start of 2021 that livestock moved to the areas’ edges. So, we had to remove and relocate them near the core.
Unfortunately, the results don’t show any cheetah recorded in Miandasht, which is very concerning, but there have been some cheetah records in Touran, which we are now analyzing and identifying.
Here you can see some of the photos that have been captured by the camera traps in Touran. Hope you will enjoy them.