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Sanju · 04-15-2019, 12:12 AM

Persian Leopard Existence proved by Photographs in Kazakhstan for the First Time !!!

LEOPARDS NEVER LIVED IN KAZAKHSTAN, (not in "modern range distribution" but they were in Pleistocene though that doesn't be considered), BUT LIKE I SAID EVOLUTION IS A CONTINUOUS PROCESS, WHEN CONDITIONS ARE SUITABLE ANIMALS WILL RADIATE TO NEWER RANGES "NATURALLY".

This is another example @Spalea when we talked about tigers in gir...

Anyway at last Persian leopards conservation betterment. SURVIVAL KING FOR A REASON, VERSATILE OF THE VERSATILE Strong

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Persian leopard / Nordpersischer Leopard by Michelle Bender.

Here’s a cool article from Tanya Rosen: a National Geographic Explorer and wild cat conservationist who works in Central Asia. It seems that Persian leopards, also called Caucasian leopards, have been showing up in areas where they’re not “supposed” to be.

Persian leopards are a subspecies of leopard (Panthera pardus) that live in countries like Iran, Georgia, Azerbaijan, Armenia, and Turkmenistan (World Land Trust). BUT NOT IN KAZAKHSTAN.

Despite the fact that Kazakhstan and Turkmenistan share a border, Rosen explains that the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) previously believed that, “Kazakhstan is well outside the current or historical range of Persian leopards.”

In ordinary language, that means that Persian leopards don’t live in Kazakhstan – nor have they in historical times. That assessment may not be accurate "now".

On September 29, 2018, scientist Aktan Muhashov was checking a camera trap that had been placed in Kazakhstan’s Ustyurt Nature Reserve for a study on vultures. As he was flipping through the photos, an animal appeared that Muhashov wasn’t expecting: a Persian leopard.

Quote:This was the first time a live Persian leopard had been photographed in Kazakhstan. However, the cat’s presence wasn’t a surprise to everyone. It is because locals are well aware of them and kill them time to time.

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Some of the scenery in Kazakhstan, although this photo was not taken in Ustyurt Reserve. Kazakhstan Desert by Mariusz Kluzniak.

Rosen writes that local people in Kazakhstan previously had leopard-related “lore,” suggesting they were familiar with the species. At least three leopards have also been killed in Kazakhstan in the past two decades due to human-wildlife conflict; and, shortly before the aforementioned leopard was photographed last September, officials responded to a report in Ustyurt Reserve of an animal that looked like a leopard attacking livestock.

Nevertheless, this leopard’s photograph sent shockwaves throughout Kazakhstan. School children named the cat Tay Sheri a MALE Persian leopard, “The Spirit of the Mountains,” while Ustyurt Reserve and an environmental activist named Adilbek Kosibekov launched separate art competitions inspired by the leopard.

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Most importantly, Tay Sheri’s photo might help to protect Ustyurt from gas mining.

Ustyurt has long been considered a potential UNESCO World Heritage site, but its listing has been delayed by the prospect of gas mining in a critical section of the reserve. The excitement generated by Tay Sheri’s presence means that there’s now a greater chance that this destructive form of development will not take place.

Tay Sheri’s story shows that just by turning up in key locations, animals like leopards can unknowingly alter the course of human politics.

A more contentious example of this involves jaguars (Panthera onca) in Arizona, who – without knowing it – are caught up in struggles pertaining to open-pit mining and Trump’s stupid border wall.

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Connecting spots, connecting cultures through Persian leopard conservation in Turkmenistan

Quote:The goal is to understand the distribution of Persian leopards across Turkmenistan and develop a regional strategy. By "connecting the spots" we can connect one of the most iconic leopard subspecies and the people that live alongside it.

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Tay Sheri - the first Persian leopard camera trapped in Kazakhstan

So how does it feel to check a camera trap, scroll through the photos on your computer, and see a species that neither IUCN or your country considers extant where you live ? For example a Persian leopard ?

That’s the question I asked Aktan Muhashov, the young and dynamic scientific collaborator of the Ustyurt Nature Reserve in Mangystau region in western Kazakhstan and co-author of a forthcoming article in the IUCN Cat News on the “First camera trap record of Persian leopard Panthera pardus saxicolor on the territory of the Ustyurt Nature Reserve” (Pestov et al, in press).

I have been intrigued for a few years now by the possibility that there could be Persian leopards in Kazakhstan. There have been three records of dead ones during the past 19 years, as a result of human-wildlife conflict. Paul Salopek recounted leopard "lore" from local people during his traverse of Mangystau.

Despite the confirmed presence of leopards, through these conflict episodes, according to the IUCN Red List Assessment of the Persian leopard subspecies “Kazakhstan is well outside the current or historical range of Persian leopards” (Khorozian 2008).

Quote:Kazakhstan similarly does not list Persian leopards on their Red Book of Flora and Fauna: that means that killing one today does not carry any fine ...!!!!

In September 2018, Aktan and Zhaskairat Nurmuhambetov, the tireless deputy director of the Ustyurt Reserve, received a call from a village several hundreds of kilometers north of the Reserve. The distressed herder reported that his livestock was attacked by an animal that looked like a leopard. Both dedicated and passionate biologists and conservationists, Aktan and Zhaskairat drove to the village and gathered the people to understand whether a leopard was responsible for the killings.

It remains a mistery whether that was the case or not. But two weeks later, on September 29, in the framework of a camera trap study on "vultures" co-led by Russian biologist Mark Pestov and funded by the Rufford Foundation, Aktan checked the cameras and downloaded the photos.

Back in the office, while looking through the photos, his jaw dropped as unmistakably there was a Persian leopard in one !!!!! shocked

He told Zhaskairat to take a look: the two colleagues were in disbelief.

The last time the cameras were checked, on 26 February 2019, the leopard was still there. In the meantime, the find generated a great deal of momentum on revisiting the question of the Red Book status of the leopard in Kazakhstan. Mark Pestov and Vladimir Terentyev, Central Asian Desert Initiative (CADI) project coordinator for the Association for the Conservation of Biodiversity of Kazakhstan (ACBK) are putting together the necessary information to include the Persian leopard in the Book.

Similarly, the leopard has reignited conversations about something of significance to the Mangystau region and beyond: the listing of the Ustyurt Reserve as UNESCO World Heritage site.

The proposal to list the Reserve as UNESCO site has been in the works for years but has faced a significant roadblock: the proposed development across the Reserve of the Kansu “plains” as a gas field, which would make the listing of the Reserve more complex to achieve. These plains are important habitat for goitered gazelles as well as other plains/desert dwelling species.

Now seemingly there is a much hoped possibility that Kansu may not be developed as a gas field, creating an opportunity to include the Ustyurt Reserve is the list of "tentative sites" for UNESCO World Heritage designation.

As Kazakhstan woke up to the hopeful news of a first camera trap record of a Persian leopard, all the past leopards deaths are a stark reminder that the fate of leopards in Kazakhstan hinges on working with local communities and preventing conflict on top of strengthening anti-poaching efforts in the Reserve.

And so is inspiring the youth. In that spirit, within weeks of the first camera trap record, the Ustyurt Reserve launched an art competition in Zhanaozhen, where the Reserve headquarters are located, as well as a call to name the leopard.

Children from the local schools sent in their drawings of the leopard. The leopard was named Tay Sheri, which means “Spirit of the Mountains”. Recently, Adilbek Kosibekov, an environmental activist from the Caspian sea city Aktau, and member of ACBK, launched a similar successful art competition in a local school.

The question remains: where is Tay Sheri from? Wait for my next post for some answers.

Photos below: 1. Tay Sheri camera trapped on author's birthday - photo by Pestov/Nurmuhambetov/Muhashov/Terentyev/Ustyurt Reserve
2. Aktan Muhashov places a camera trap in the Reserve - photo by T. Rosen
3. View of Ustyurt Reserve - photo by T Rosen
4. Aktan, Mark Pestov and Zhaskairat Nurmuhambetov - photo by T Rosen

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Tay Sheri: from Balkan to Mangystau?

The Ustyurt Nature Reserve is a spectacular place. The Ustyurt plateau was once the bottom of the Tethys ocean. As you walk on it you come across relics that are as far as 100 million years old: shell traces in the limestone, and ferromanganese nodules of different size. And shark teeth. The terrain broken by chalk deposits in the form of rocks and random cracks looks like Mars.

Steep cliffs called chinks tower over the plains, used by goitered gazelles. Its muddy and salty portions, called salanchak, are the gazelles’ refuge from wolves, as their heavy paws sink into them, giving a breather to these lanky ungulates who can then safely escape. The chinks have deep and complex canyons that with their shade and water sources provide relief from the heat and resting spots for the Urial sheep, especially during those 40-50 C degree summers.

It’s on top of one these chinks that Tay Sheri was first camera trapped. This April I joined the colleagues from the Reserve, in addition to Aktan and Mark, Akniaz Pulatov and Baurzhan Kairalapov, in placing ten camera traps, in the hope to identify the trails the leopard is using and also to understand whether he is the only leopard using the Reserve. There are some other cats worthy of attention, like the caracal and steppe wild cat, that need research. More cameras can help.

So where is Tay Sheri, or his mother, from? Well, likely he traveled from across the border in in Turkmenistan (see map). Turkmenistan harbors the second largest population of Persian leopards. Many years ago, Urs Breitenmoser, co-chair of the IUCN Cat Specialist Group, and Victor Lukarevsky, Russian wildlife biologist, visited the Kaplankyr reserve in Turkmenistan, south east of the Ustyurt Reserve, on the border with Uzbekistan.

Quote:The hope was to find Asiatic cheetah, but instead Urs and Victor found tracks that looked leopard-like. But according to our Turkmen colleagues, there are no recent sign of leopards in the Kaplankyr reserve. @Lycaon

It’s possible that some leopards made their way from the Western Kopet Dag mountains to the Big Balkan mountains, north of Balkanabat and their offsprings onwards to the borderlands with Kazakhstan.

In a straight line, between the Big Balkan mountains and the spot where Tay Sheri was camera trapped there are approximately 300 km.

It’s not unheard that they can disperse that far. According to Mohammad Farhadinia, Kaveh, a dispersing young male leopard, expanded from Iran into Turkmenistan, resulting in a range with 81.6 km between farthest fixes (Farhadinia 2018).

However, and that seems to be the opinion of Khojamurad Khojamuradov, biologist of the Sunt Hasardag reserve in Turkmenistan, Tay Sheri could be an offspring of a cat that settled in the borderlands between Kazakhstan and Turkmenistan.

Because of extended security the borderlands are very secure and often poaching free sites. The location where Tay Sheri was camera trapped is approximately 170 km from border areas, that based on a map overview, look like potentially suitable leopard habitat. This is all speculation of course. But next week with Khojamurad and the rest of the Turkmen team will be heading to some of these areas to find further clues.

The leopard and its travels underscore the connectedness of these places and countries. In my eyes leopards are messengers of peace and collaboration across borders. Learning about their ecology and movements and securing their future involves bringing Iran, Turkmenistan, Kazakhstan and all the other range countries together and most importantly ensuring dynamic exchanges between scientists, conservationists and government officials – to put science recommendations into practice.

Personally, I owe most I know about Persian leopards to my Iranian colleagues. One of them, Amirhossein Khaleghi Hamidi, has always been a source of tremendous inspiration and knowledge. Every new camera trap photo of a leopard is bittersweet, however, as I cannot share the joy of it with Amirhossein, in Evin prison since January 2018.

We need him, as well as the rest of our jailed Iranian colleagues free to ensure the future of these beautiful cats. Angry

remember Iran jailed its conservationists amd lycaon say asiatic cheetah will survive Huh

Photo captions:
Caracal in Ustyurt Reserve - photo by Pestov/Nurmuhambetov/Muhashov/Terentyev/UNR
Tay Sheri in Ustyurt Reserve - photo by Pestov/Nurmuhambetov/Muhashov/Terentyev/UNR
Aktan and Baurzhan setting a camera - photo by Rosen
Ustyurt landscape - photo by Rosen

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More field work and setting of camera traps await in the next months. But this is surely a good start!

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Lol, this leopard is as slender as a cheetah.

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