New Report on Asiatic Cheetah Population in Iran...
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ICS Participated in First Cheetah Global Summit held...
Khorshid: The Everlasting Hope of Turan
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Rangers equipment
Rangers Program

Purchasing equipment for rangers

by pourmir November 6, 2018
written by pourmir 0 minutes read

Rangers usually spend their working time in the most difficult conditions. The protected areas and National Parks mostly locate on the mountains or bare areas where having proper equipment is really matter.

According to its mission, the Iranian Cheetah Society regularly tries to find the area’s needs by consulting the local experts and seek to supply them gathering the support of sponsors and donors. The list has included the storm mask, climbing glasses, Gortex gloves, and rechargeable flashlights that have funded by the Mohajerat Plus company.

Purchased Equipments

Purchased Equipment

November 6, 2018 0 comments
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Asiatic Cheetah Population Monitoring Program

Is there a new cheetah appeared in Kerman?

by pourmir November 1, 2018
written by pourmir 1 minutes read

A cheetah carcass has been found recently in Ravar Wildlife Refuge in Kerman Province and brought the questions to experts and followers if it is a new individual or not, and however, what is its gender? Certainly, the answers to these questions are critical for finding the solutions to save the southern population. Although most of the body lost, the skin on the remained parts of head and backbone still carry useful details for identification. Therefore we started to work on data although it was hard to give an accurate answer according to the carcass’ status.

All the photos are compared with the ICS’ cheetahs ID book precisely and lastly, the experts agreed on the most similar individual. Based on the checking, the founded carcass belongs to a male cheetah named Pouyan that was recorded by ICS in 2016 during the third phase of monitoring project in Naybandan Wildlife Refuge. This area is in southern Khorasan and located in the north of Ravar Wildlife Refuge where the carcass found a few days ago. The taken camera-trap photo in the area between Ravar and Naybandan on early 2017 proves the idea that probably Pouyan was migrating to the south. The status of teeth shows that perhaps Pouyan was old and its death had a natural cause.

All in all, the fact that this cheetah was male and not a new individual does not reduce the importance of southern habitats specifically the Ravar Wildlife Refuge according to the lack of our information but highlights the area for more study and survey on the presence or reproduction of the cheetahs in future.

November 1, 2018 0 comments
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ICS NewsYahya Award

ICS launches the Yahya Prize for the fifth consecutive year

by pourmir October 17, 2018
written by pourmir 0 minutes read

Established by the Iranian Cheetah Society (ICS) in 2014 through a generous donation by an Iranian artist couple, Mojtaba Ramzi and Paridokht Moshkzad, the Yahya Prize recognizes Iranian rangers who have done outstanding efforts to protect Iran’s wildlife and natural environment. The Award committee is now busy with reviewing applications for the fifth award ceremony, which is expected to continue during the following two months. Stay tuned for updates on the 2018 winters of Yahya Prize and the timing for the Awards ceremony!

October 17, 2018 0 comments
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Asiatic Cheetah Conservation ProgramAsiatic Cheetah Population Monitoring ProgramICS News

ICS surveys Miandasht for cheetahs, again

by pourmir October 15, 2018
written by pourmir 1 minutes read

Miandasht Wildlife Refuge in North Khorasan Province, north-eastern Iran, is the long-term project site of the Iranian Cheetah Society (ICS). As one of the few sites known to host a reproducing cheetah population in Iran, our scientists have been studying the local cheetah population for over a decade. Since 2011, ICS scientists have intensively used camera traps to monitor the Miandasht cheetahs. In 2017, our team had to abandon its fieldwork in Miandasht as legal authorities. It took over one year to obtain the necessary permissions to re-launch the survey of Miandasht.

Our team is now working with the local wildlife authority and Miandasht’s rangers to provide an up-to-date status assessment of the cheetah population. Some of the new camera-trap photos from Miandasht can been seen here. Learn about how you can help us to continue this work.

October 15, 2018 0 comments
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cheetah day

A tribute to the National Cheetah Day

by pourmir October 13, 2018
written by pourmir 1 minutes read

Asiatic cheetahs are globally “Critically Endangered” according to the IUCN Red List. Iran is home to the last population of the Asiatic cheetah in the world. With a presumed population of 50 cheetah individuals at best, challenges associated with the current status of the Asiatic cheetah population include incidental killing of cheetahs by people or livestock guarding dogs, habitat fragmentation and loss of biological corridors and prey base depletion. Twelve years ago, the Iranian Cheetah Society (ICS) proposed August 31st as the “National Cheetah Day” in Iran to encourage conservation of the last remaining population of Asiatic cheetahs. The National Cheetah Day is now endorsed and celebrated by Iran Department of the Environment, Conservation of the Asiatic Cheetah Project and several Iranian NGOs every year. In honor of the Cheetah National Day, ICS releases “Save Our Cheetah” – a short video by Majid Sarhaddi, an Iranian filmmaker and friend of ICS.

This year ICS scientists joined a campaign to raise awareness of the critical status of the Asiatic cheetah in the Iranian public media. In a series of articles published in Etemaad, a leading Farsi-language daily newspaper, ICS scientists discuss the challenges and potential solutions to recover the Asiatic cheetah population. Recently, Iran Department of the Environment declared that, together with the United Nations Development Program (UNDP), it is working on the draft of the third phase of the Conservation of the Asiatic Cheetah Project considering the measures proposed by national and international collaborators.

October 13, 2018 0 comments
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ICS News

ICS releases 2017 annual report

by pourmir October 11, 2018
written by pourmir 2 minutes read

The Iranian Cheetah Society (ICS) has published its 2017 annual report (in Farsi), documenting its conservation activities and progress during the Persian calendar year 1396. This report covers the ICS conservation projects on the Asiatic cheetah in north-eastern Iran, the Caucasus Leopard Project in north-western Iran, workshops and educational activities for rangers and students, news on “Water for Cheetahs” campaign and the fourth year of Yahya Prize – a national award ceremony for accomplished Iranian rangers, scientific and popular publications, etc.

“The ICS has witnessed significant changes over the years 2016 and 2017,” according to letters by Behnam Ehsan-Bakhsh, the Chair of the Board, and Mohammad Gaeini, the acting-CEO of ICS. Mohammad Gaeini states that “[i]n 2016, ICS Board of Directors decided to propose a number of internal organizational changes. Consequently, Ms. Leyla Qasemzadeh was appointed as the new CEO of ICS”. Leyla Qasemzadeh replaced Morteza Eslami, the Co-founder of ICS and currently a Board Officer, and became the first CEO at ICS who was not a co-founder. “Leyla successfully managed the ICS succession planning throughout 2017. Sadly, our conservation activities deteriorated in this year, often due to increasing financial pressure in Iran [following the economic sanctions], as well as a series of unfortunate events… that almost led to a shutdown of environmental NGOs’ activities within the country,” writes ICS acting-CEO Mohammad Gaeini. “Consequently, the Board of ICS had to impose strict austerity measures that led to Leyla’s departure at the end of her one-year contract by the terms of an exit agreement,“ according to Mohammad Gaeini. “Yet, there is also a reason for optimism 17 years after the foundation of ICS. Wildlife conservation is appreciated more now than ever in Iran and we hope our dedicated team can continue its work throughout the following years.” The English version of the annual report will be released soon.

October 11, 2018 0 comments
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Asiatic Cheetah Conservation ProgramWater for Cheetahs Project

Local herder engaged through the “Water for Cheetahs” campaign, spotted two Asiatic cheetahs

by pourmir October 9, 2018
written by pourmir 1 minutes read

In 2015, our team launched a campaign to provide water for Asiatic cheetahs and their natural prey in Miandasht Wildlife Refuge in North Khorasan Province. Because of excessive livestock grazing and a prolonged drought, local rangers used to spend a significant portion of their working hours supplying water for artificial water sites (‘wildlife drinkers’) inside Miandasht, which, in turn, negatively affected their anti-poaching patrolling of the reserve. Through the “Water for Cheetahs” campaign, the Iranian Cheetah Society (ICS) has been able to raise funding to enroll a local herder to assist Miandasht rangers in the water provision for wildlife.

On July 23rd, 2018, the local wildlife authority reported that this local assistant has spotted two adult Asiatic cheetahs near one of the artificial wildlife drinkers. Miandasht is believed to support one of the last two viable cheetah sub-populations in Iran. Thanks to private donors and our partner organization World Land Trust, we have been able to continue the “Water for Cheetahs” campaign in 2018. Learn about how you can help us to continue this work in here.

October 9, 2018 0 comments
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Asiatic Cheetah Conservation ProgramAsiatic Cheetah Population Monitoring Program

Another long-distance movement by an Asiatic cheetah recorded in central Iran

by pourmir October 6, 2018
written by pourmir 1 minutes read

On July 8th, 2018, a camera-trap set by Yazd Department of the Environment photographed an Asiatic cheetah in Bahabad No-Hunting Area. Located in Yazd Province in central Iran, this is the first hard evidence of cheetah occurrence in Bahabad since 2012. Our researchers compared this new photo with those of identified cheetah individuals during our Cheetah Monitoring Program. Surprisingly, the Iranian Cheetah Society (ICS) researchers identified this cheetah as a male cheetah known to us as “Arash”. Arash has been photo-captured by our camera-traps in Naybandan Wildlife Refuge in South Khorasan Province, over 150 km away from Bahabad.

Arash ID Card

Arash ID Card

 

ICS camera-traps have recorded multiple long-distance movements by Asiatic cheetahs in central Iran since 2012, some even up to 217 km between the furthest known locations. Disturbingly, no female cheetahs or any hard evidence of cheetah reproduction has been recorded in the Southern Cheetah Landscape, including the Yazd Province, since 2012. These findings suggest improving protection beyond the current network of protected areas, particularly through biological corridors, must be a top priority in plans to save the Asiatic cheetah in Iran.

October 6, 2018 0 comments
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ArticlesLeopard Program

ICS study confirms transboundary leopard movements between Azerbaijan and Iran in the Caucasus

by June 20, 2018
written by 1 minutes read

Together with researchers from WWF, Iran Department of Environment and the Humboldt University of Berlin, ICS researchers have published the first confirmed evidence of transboundary leopard movements between Azerbaijan and Iran in the Caucasus Ecoregion.

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It has been speculated for a long time that Persian leopards in Azerbaijan and Armenia might be connected with leopard populations in the Iranian Caucasus, or even depend on these populations as a source for dispersing individuals. However, no confirmed evidence of leopard movements between Iran and either of these two countries had been documented. Comparing photos of a Persian leopard poached in Gilan Province of Iran with camera-trap photographs obtained 30 km away (straight-line distance) from Hirkan National Park in Azerbaijan allowed our researchers to identify this leopard. This incident supports a previous ICS study that predicted the Talysh Mountains to be a critical linkage for connecting the border landscape between Iran, Azerbaijan, and Armenia to the presumed source leopard population in the Alborz Mountains in Northern Iran.
ICS’ research on Persian leopards in the Iranian Caucasus is generously supported by World Land Trust (WLT) and Iran Department of Environment.

June 20, 2018 0 comments
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ICS in News

Iran’s Brown Bears Are Closer to the Edge Than People Have Realized or, Perhaps, Cared

by pourmir April 5, 2018
written by pourmir 5 minutes read

In the United States, we associate brown bears with the tidal flats of Alaska and the craggy mountainsides of Montana. Some of us might be aware that this beautiful, burly species also inhabits the wilds of Russia, the Himalayas, the northern reaches of Japan, and Nordic countries such as Sweden and Finland.

But did you know that brown bears also lumber across the Middle East? Yeah, me neither.

Apparently, if you could step into a time machine and travel back to the 19th century and beyond, you would find brown bears as far south and west as Egypt and the Sinai Peninsula. Unfortunately, the bear’s range has shrunk over time, due to hunting, human-wildlife conflict, and general habitat loss. Today, in places like Iran, the bruins have been pushed back to small pockets of habitat.

Here’s the most interesting part: Despite these animals measuring roughly 9 feet long and weighing upwards of 500 pounds, we don’t really know how many of the behemoths remain across all their varied habitats. In fact, a recent study found that rangers working in Iran’s Arasbaran Biosphere Reserve, or ABR, overestimated the area’s bear abundance by a factor of three to five when compared with more rigorous scientific analysis, such as scat sampling. (The two dozen rangers estimated that bear density was between 122 and 199 animals in the region, while the scientists who analyzed the DNA of the bear poop figure the number is closer to 40.)

This is a problem, says Ehsan Moqanaki, lead author of the paper and an ecologist with the Iranian Cheetah Society, a conservation NGO, because we can’t effectively save an animal population if we don’t know its size. “There is no state-run monitoring of large carnivores, such as brown bears, in the Iranian protected areas,” Moqanaki says. “Thus, the local wildlife authority relies on the experiential knowledge of rangers as the only available source of information in the decision-making process.”

Basically, if Iran thinks it has more bears than it actually does, then the country probably isn’t going to prioritize bear conservation anytime soon. Add to this dilemma the fact that most of the people Moqanaki interviewed during his time in the ABR are fed up with the animals, and the future of those remaining bears looks rather grim.

Even though the ABR covers more than 300 square miles, with several core areas that are off-limits to people, the region is a patchwork of wilderness and rural areas that are heavily populated. Raising sheep, cattle, and goats is a way of life for local residents. During his 10 weeks searching for scat in the ABR, Moqanaki says, he was attacked several times by herding, pet, and feral dogs. (“I prefer bear charges,” he jokes.) But he crossed paths with only a single brown bear.

Still, he knew that they were out there. Locals report occasional attacks on livestock, farm raids, or even aggression toward humans by area bears throughout the year. These are regular occurrences for any region where bears and people share their turf—particularly in farming areas, where orchards, crop fields, and beehives tempt the hungry animals. After all, bears are wont to show up when there are tasty treats afoot.

As a result, the ABR’s bear population is heavily persecuted. “The majority of locals I interrogated supported culling of the local bear population,” Moqanaki says.

The fate of the region’s bears doesn’t rest only with local community members, however. It’s also the responsibility of the Iranian government. And while Moqanaki recommends that the country adopt more scientifically accurate sampling techniques to inform wildlife management decisions, he acknowledges that the government probably doesn’t have the resources to do so.

“Decades of economic sanctions and the political isolation of Iran have minimized international collaboration and foreign investments in biodiversity research and conservation in the country, making it very difficult to conduct such studies even at small scales,” he says.

Bears aren’t the only animals for which number problems hamper conservation efforts, by the way. One study found that traditional methods for tallying birds of prey, which basically boil down to counting them by sight, are vastly underrepresenting the actual population size. Tiger population estimates also fluctuate considerably based on which sampling methods scientists use. And just last month it was revealed that the Bornean orangutan is even more endangered than scientists had thought.

Another study concluded that lack of good population data contributed to the total extirpation of the Javan rhino in Vietnam. In this case, it was fatefully assumed that there were too few rhinos left to justify spending vast sums of money on relocation efforts or anti-poaching enforcement—both of which might have fostered their recovery. The underestimates also made it difficult to raise more funds to fuel the conservation programs that had already been agreed upon.

As for the brown bears of Iran, arriving at a reliable population estimate will be crucial for prioritizing conservation going forward. For instance, Moqanaki notes that shortly after his study period ended in 2012, the nation’s wildlife authority reported that people living within the ABR had killed 10 bears within a single calendar year. Before the latest regional study downgraded their numbers from 200 to 40, this would have been considered a hit of around 5 percent of the overall population. But Moqanaki’s new numbers paint a different picture entirely. By his reckoning, 10 bears represent a loss of 25 percent of all the bears in the reserve. Unfortunately, without a better idea of how many bears are truly in this area, or the way the animals move in and out of protected regions, Moqanaki says there’s no way to know how devastating (or inconsequential) a loss of 10 bears might be to the regional population.

What we do know though, is that when animals continue to be persecuted without reliable population statistics, they can eventually go the way of the Javan rhino. Or the Northern white rhino—of course everybody knows their story. There are as many of them left as there are living Beatles.

Numbers matter. And the clock is ticking.

April 5, 2018 0 comments
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  • New Report on Asiatic Cheetah Population in Iran Released
  • Iranian Cheetah Society Releases Triennial Report For 2021-2023
  • ICS Participated in First Cheetah Global Summit held in Ethiopia
  • Khorshid: The Everlasting Hope of Turan
  • Explorers of Hope Follow the Trail of a Cheetah in a Rural Area

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New Report on Asiatic Cheetah Population in Iran Released

Iranian Cheetah Society Releases Triennial Report on Wildlife Conservation and Asiatic Cheetah Conservation

Iranian Cheetah Society Releases Triennial Report For 2021-2023

Iranian Cheetah Society team with the Laurie Marker from CCF

ICS Participated in First Cheetah Global Summit held in Ethiopia

Asiatic Cheetah cubs, Khorshid Family

Khorshid: The Everlasting Hope of Turan

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