December 26-2014
Land mines left over from the Iran-Iraq war that ended a quarter century ago still kill and maim people who live in border regions, but those same mines are a major help in preserving the nearly extinct Persian leopard.
The mines are so helpful in keeping people out of areas where the leopards have taken refuge that some conservationists are now opposing efforts to clear more mines.
Once spread across the Caucasus region, Persian leopards now are relegated to the former war zone, along with a few isolated pockets of rural Iran.
As part of the eight-year war, the Iraqi and Iranian armed forces planted an estimated 20 million to 30 million land mines. Now the mines discourage poachers from entering areas where the leopards hide.
Iraq’s semiautonomous Kurdistan region is developing swiftly, and along with that comes hot pursuit of oil and gas deposits—many of which lie in leopard-heavy highlands
Conservation of endangered species is not a high priority. As in many developing regions, the welfare of the environment is a distant consideration where economic development is the public’s first demand.
That’s why the region’s conservationists now find themselves in the not-so-comfortable position of opposing some land-mine clearance efforts, The National Geographic magazine reported last week. Clearing the way for people to return to those areas could put the leopards in jeopardy, they say.
“Environmentally speaking, mines are great, because they keep people out,” said Azzam Alwash, head of the conservation group Nature Iraq.
The market for leopard pelts has mostly dried up, the National Geographic said, but there’s still a certain cachet associated with ensnaring such an exotic creature. As a result, the harsh penalties attached to killing leopards haven’t done much to dissuade determined trophy hunters.
The land mines, though, do a good job of keeping people off certain peaks, and these have become the leopards’ favorite haunts.
Not that leopards are entirely immune themselves to the hazards of land mines. They’re nimble, spend much of their time in trees or on rocks, and are light enough when their weight is spread over four legs not to trigger anti-tank mines, which typically are activated by payloads of more than 80 kilos (176 pounds).
But at least two are thought to have been killed by triggering the prongs and tripwires of the region’s ubiquitous Italian-made V69 antipersonnel mines. A video has also surfaced in which a leopard appears to have bled to death after losing a leg while navigating an explosive-laden mountain pass.
It might seem extraordinary that deadly devices have contributed to the Persian leopard’s continued presence in the Zagros Mountains, but the prospects of the region’s animal life have always been intimately wrapped up with the fortunes of the local people.
“Every day we have to stop operations because people are driving [domesticated] animals through the minefields,” said Chris Bull, a project manager at Sterling Global Operations, which, like most mine clearance organizations in Iraqi Kurdistan, is funded by international energy companies pursuing new oil and gas reserves.
In the late 1980s, the Iraqi government accelerated its eventual destruction of over 4,000 Kurdish villages in northern Iraq. In doing so, Saddam Hussein inadvertently boosted the animal population by reducing the number of people (and hunters) living in the mountains.
A few years later, however, many of these rural families came streaming home after the United States imposed a no-fly zone over northern Iraq—which pushed back Saddam’s forces—and the mountains’ wildlife suffered as a consequence, according to local environmentalists.
In Iran, things have panned out a little differently for both big cats and the local people who have settled among them.
The Persian leopard population is significantly bigger in Iran, earning the cat a far more prominent place in local mythology than in neighboring Iraq. “It was a symbol of power and courage in ancient Persia,” said Amirhossein Khaleghi, a co-founder of Iran’s Persian Leopard Project. The leopard’s skin, he noted, was used as a flag by several imperial dynasties.
The higher appreciation for the leopard in Iran doesn’t make its life easier, however. Iranian drivers are just as threatening as hunters. An increasing number of leopards have been killed while cutting across highways. Other leopards find themselves trapped without food by impassable highways.
More threatening still is pervasive overhunting and the increasingly combative stance of farmers fearful of losing sheep and cattle to the predator.
“Beyond the nature reserves, the amount of prey is declining due to rampant poaching,” said Arash Ghoddousi, Khaleghi’s partner in establishing Iran’s Persian Leopard Project.
“Leopards are having to go nearer villages to hunt prey, and this has brought them into conflict with livestock farmers, who use poison or kill the animal with a rifle,” Ghoddousi said.
In both Iran and Iraq, forest rangers are charged with protecting the leopard and pursuing those who hunt it. And the National Geographic says they’ve performed relatively well in penalizing illegal hunters and chasing down bazaar vendors who market leopard pelts.
Still, many villagers supplement their meager diets with meat from the mountains, which has sparked a fierce conflict between the locals and law enforcement officials. The same dispute is seen the world over. But far from empowering these wardens with significant clout to combat those who threaten protected species, officials have hamstrung them with an unforgiving legal framework.
“[Iran’s] rangers are allowed to carry weapons, but if a ranger accidentally kills a poacher, he will go through a long court experience, and probably go to prison and maybe get executed,” Ghoddousi said.
Calculating just how endangered the Persian leopard has become is challenging. There are no official counts, and independent efforts to tally numbers have been repeatedly ruined by thieves stealing the photographic equipment planted in the mountains to detect the leopards. The best estimates put the total number at somewhere around a thousand, with the majority in Iran.
All 10 of the cameras Nature Iraq uses to photograph and identify leopards have been stolen, as have 24 of the 80 devices the Persian Leopard Project set up around Iran’s Golestan National Park.