Your Impact on the leopards

 

Backpacks for herders

With the exception of a small percentage of the country’s area, gazetted as human-free national park, the rest host both wildlife as well as humans, including herders and shepherds. Although they presence is wide across many areas of high importance for wildlife, they are rarely engaged on conservation initiatives. Now, we want to change this counterproductive approach, by engaging them in conservation of several charismatic species, including Persian leopard, Asiatic cheetah and Pallas’s cat. In this effort, we will be working with over 100 herders which are ranging in over 1000 km2 of north-eastern Iran. The backpacks, signed as “wildlife lover”, will be part of the larger engagement pack which will be shared with the herders in spring 2022. By the end of this project, we will expect a significant decrease in persecution of carnivores by herders in the targeted area.

Conservation work could not afford any pause

Although covid-19 ceased many activities across the world, our conservation work could not afford any pause. During 2020, our team had 12 expeditions to six different reserves in Iran to work closely with rangers and communities for saving leopards and their habitats. Although all our team members in Iran got covid-19, but they all recovered and were able to carry on their conservation tasks. Importantly, fortified by the covid-19 pandemic, our team provided online training courses for rangers and conservation practitioners. A total of three online events were organized, attended by cumulative number of 425 people.

Solar panels for Persian leopards

Rangers are forces on the front-line of leopard conservation; they dedicate themselves to protecting the mountains’ most beautiful and vulnerable species. Working under poor working conditions, they are usually needed to spend days away from their families in basic ranger posts. In Tandoureh National Park, where the world’s largest population of Persian leopards exists, one of the ranger posts lacks proper supplies of electricity. The resident rangers rely on a small generator, which is fuelled with petrol. As enhancing working conditions can directly benefit anti-poaching performance of rangers, the Future4Leopards Foundation prioritized establishing a permanent electricity supply for this ranger post. Thanks to our recent satellite tracking of Persian leopards in Tandoureh, we were able to pitch the idea publicly through online crowd funding platforms. Our goal was to create a solar-supplied electricity platform for the ranger station. On the last week of December, just days before the end of 2018, the solar panels were installed and the electricity is continuously provided for rangers.

13 springs restored in Tandoureh

Consecutive droughts have dried up many springs in the Middle East, including Iran. Therefore, many springs have less water, if not at all. Therefore, careful management of existing springs is crucial to cope with the drought. During the past summer, 13 springs were restored in Tandoureh in order to ensure a stable water source for the wildlife in the upcoming hot summer. They provided water for Persian leopards and their prey. Accordingly, cement was carried to higher elevations on horseback. Then, the dripping water was controlled to minimize leakage. Metal plates were used to build a canal, leading the water from rocks into a small pool, or a waterhole. Our water restoration efforts are supported by many individual donors.

Horses are helping save Persian leopards

Rangers are on the frontline of nature conservation. Working under harsh conditions, rangers often face danger as they come into contact with poachers. In order to promote the work of wildlife rangers, we have various programs so they could keep patrolling their territory on high alert to save Persian leopards and their prey. In rugged mountains of northeastern Iran, foot patrols and vehicle access is possible, but horses play an important function in that they allow rangers to cover a lot of ground rapidly and with minimal effort. Therefore, follow up, tracking and intervention against poachers is best done on horseback. The Future4Leopards Foundation has equipped anti-poaching units in Tandoureh National Park with new horses and horse-riding equipment. As a result, the park has now 3 horse patrol teams, together with foot patrol and motorbike patrol teams. The current anti-poaching brigade will effectively increase safety for leopards and their prey inside one of the most critical sites in west Asia.

A big stride for deer restoration in northern Iran

Persian leopards are rare, but one of their prey species, the Hyrcanian red deer, is probably as rare as the leopards themselves. As the largest ungulate in west Asian forests, Hyrcanian red deer have been disappearing from most of their range along the southern Caspian Sea and into the Caucasus. There is a tiny population left in the Dohezar-Sehezar No Hunting Area, likely fewer than 50 individuals. Since 2016 we have taken multiple steps to secure this small population, from engaging hunters who later called for a stop to illegal deer hunting to hiring an ex-poacher as a ranger. Now we are more than excited to share the wonderful news with you of a project that will support our restoration efforts in the long term. We have just provided technical assistance to a local philanthropist who has established a red deer breeding and education facility in the area. Consisting of 10 adult red deer, all safely translocated by our crew from another breeding center in late December 2017, the herd is expected to provide some individuals in the long term for rewilding. Also, the center will be an educational attraction to spread the word at local and regional levels.

A key poacher arrested in Tandoureh

Our camera trapping studies in Tandoureh enabled us to create a reliable map of the areas most frequented by leopards. We found one valley which was much used by some 10 leopards but rarely visited by rangers due to its remoteness and the difficulty of the trail that led to it. Fairly predictably, therefore, the valley became a hotspot for poachers. We decided to construct an access track into the valley, and four kilometers of mountain trail were built. Rangers can now get there in just half an hour compared to half a day before. On 13 October 2017, a quick response by the rangers and the greatly improved access to the valley enabled them to intercept a gang of poachers, composed of two individuals with a rifle, after they had shot two urial ewes. The poachers were arrested and are now in jail, subject to a penalty of US$2,500 for each ewe. One of them was the most outstanding poacher in Tandoureh, estimated to be shooting dozens of animals per year. Without such rapid access trails the best areas in the national parks can turn into a hell for wildlife but a heaven for poachers.

Iron horse for leopard shield

You may remember our first leopard shield, the ex-poacher who we recruited as a ranger to protect leopards and their prey in northern Iran. After six months of dedicated work by our novel ranger, we procured an “iron horse” for him – a powerful trail motorbike to enable him to better carry out anti-poaching patrolling in the area. He has been extremely successful for the past several months, deterring a few groups of poachers each month. The new bike enhances his social status and thus the support local people will give him, all of which improves his ability to patrol his area effectively. This is a remarkable step toward enhancing conservation in the area and will greatly aid our dedicated leopard shield.

Training tour for anti-poaching units

Working as a ranger can be exciting, challenging, tough, but sometimes boring. Why? Spending three decades of life in a few valleys without receiving additional training, it is hard to find motivation and a positive drive, no matter how passionate and dedicated you are. Working 20 days each month to patrol vast mountains and plains leaves no time for rangers to get new insights and experiences. Often, rangers have never seen any other place than the area they patrol. We have been planning to arrange dedicated tours for rangers, supporting them to visit other reserves and to get to know colleagues working in other leopard areas. The first training tour was organized between 8 and 11 May 2017. Eight rangers from Dohezar-Sehezar visited Tandoureh National Park. They had the chance to meet Tandoureh’s rangers and to exchange their experience with poaching and countermeasures. In the meantime, visitor rangers learned more about eco-trips for local school kids within Tandoureh. The tour, which was supported by the Future4Leopards Foundation, was highly welcomed by rangers and the next tours are being planned already.

Detecting poachers in the lands of leopards

Poaching poses a serious threat to wildlife and is most of the time hard to witness. Poachers carefully monitor ranger activities, gathering information on patrol activities in different areas. This allows them to identify the most vulnerable locations and times for different species. In many cases, understaffed and under-equipped rangers have to make a stand against poachers who are far better equipped. Future4Leopards Foundation aims to assist rangers in enhancing their anti-poaching performance through provision of equipment, proper infrastructures and, more recently, hidden camera traps. We are now donating camera traps to rangers within our pilot sites, the goal being twofold: monitoring poacher activity and studying wildlife, including leopards. Our trial project to detect poachers using camera traps has proven to work well. So far, we have detected at least 4 different gangs of poachers in Tandoureh and Dohezar-Sehezar. This was thanks to camera traps we donated to these areas. Currently, we are working to train local rangers to improve the deployment and management of these anti-poaching surveillance camera traps. In combination with an increase in the amount of camera traps, we are convinced this technology will be of great help in the reduction of poaching.

Discover Persian Leopard

The leopard (Panthera pardus Linnaeus 1978) is one of the most widely distributed terrestrial species, with a global range of at least 80 countries across a wide variety of habitats, from rainforests to deserts. After the disappearance of the Asiatic lion (Panthera leo persica) and Caspian tiger (Panthera tigris virgata) prior to the 1970s, the Persian leopard (Panthera pardus saxicolor) remains as the largest cat in western Asia. Presently, it is considered “endangered” on the IUCN red list of threatened species. Arid environments of the Middle East are typically low-productive landscapes which harbour a number of threatened large carnivores, including the leopard. Leopards range across the mountains and foothills of west Asia from Turkmenistan and Afghanistan through Iran to the Caucasus, as well as the Arabian Peninsula. A substantial proportion of their distribution across this region is spatially non-contiguous, influenced by human disturbance and extremely low annual rainfall (<200 mm per annum). Low rainfall limits leopard density through constrained primary productivity.

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