Only 70 to 100 Asiatic cheetahs are believed still alive today, living in scattered groups in Iran. But a solitary male cheetah has been found near Miandasht who will die without cubs if a female cheetah is not found to mate with him.
The male cheetah is being kept in what is called “semi-captivity”—an area encompassing 80 hectares (200 acres) in North Khorasan province.
Other cheetahs are in semi-captivity in a large range in Semnan province. And there are scattered groups elsewhere. There have been some reported sightings in Pakistan’s Baluchestan province, but otherwise the only surviving Asiatic cheetahs are in Iran, which has been devoting resources to try to preserve the breed.
The cheetah is the world’s fastest land animal, Royalty in ancient Iran trained cheetahs to hunt gazelles.
The small number is generally accepted internationally as Iran has a record of 12,000 nights of camera trapping over the central Iranian plateau for the last decade.
The main threat to the species is the loss of their primary food—jebeer gazelle, goitered gazelle, urial sheep and wild goat—due to poaching and grazing competition from domestic livestock.