|
September 9, 2008 10:25 PM
By Fredrik Dahl
KUH-E BAFGH PROTECTED AREA, Iran - Iranian and Western wildlife experts are working together to save rare cheetahs from extinction in this arid, mountainous region, despite a nuclear row between their governments.
US and British-based conservation groups are backing a campaign spearheaded by Iran's Department of Environment (DoE) and the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) to prevent the endangered Asiatic cheetah from dying out.
Iran is believed to host the only 60-100 Asiatic cheetahs left in the wild. Some eke out a living in a forbidding terrain of jagged peaks, deep gorges and bone-dry plains in the
Kuh-e Bafgh protected area in Yazd province in central Iran.
The sleek and spotted cats once roamed between the Arabian
peninsula and India, but their number in Iran is estimated to
have fallen by roughly half in the last three decades.
"This is a wonderful case of the urgent conservation needs
of the cheetah transcending political differences," executive
director Luke Hunter of Panthera, a non-governmental
organisation (NGO) in New York, said in an e-mail.
The United States, which severed ties with Iran after its
1979 Islamic revolution, is leading efforts to isolate the
Middle Eastern country over nuclear work Washington suspects is
aimed at making bombs, a charge Tehran denies.
But Hunter, an Australian, said he believed "both Iranians
and Americans realise that we cannot afford to allow politics
to affect the cheetahs. If we did, we could lose them."
Iranian officials expressed similar views.
"I love anybody who works for conservation and wildlife
protection. It doesn't matter who it is," said Ali Akhbar
Karimi, a 59-year-old veteran from Iran's Department of
Environment in Yazd province.
Until the first half of the 20th century, Iran was home to
four of the so-called big cats - including lions and tigers -
but now only leopards and cheetahs remain.
The Asiatic cheetah is closely related to its better-known
African counterpart, a killing machine that can reach speeds of
over 100kmh an hour in pursuit of its prey.
In Iran, cheetahs have been pushed close to extinction by
increased population pressure and a lack of resources to
protect them, with villagers hunting their prey for food and
herds of sheep and goat encroaching on their habitats.
"We need to do something urgent to save them," said Iranian
biologist Houman Jowkar, field director for US-based Wildlife
Conservation Society (WCS) in Yazd.
"It is a national treasure."
|
