March/April 2014 • Volume 58 Issue 2

Features

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c o n t e n t sc o n t e n t sMARCH/APRIL 2014 | VOLUME 58, ISSUE 2

T A B L E   O F

1515Leopards of Arabia Balazs Buzas introduces us to the rarest ofleopards and efforts to propagate and protectit.

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Making the Most of Your Trip to ArizonaDesert native Fred Hood with good advicefor Convention goers.

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2014 Convention InfoEveryday there is more and more sched-uled. Register now before it’s too late!

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Come Join Us for Convention! A wild cat show, wildly fun field trips, and

stimulating speakers sure to please. The FCFConvention has something for everyone!

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Distemper, a Plague on Our Cats Vicki Keahey hopes that sharing her nightmareexperience can wake everyone up to this new,terrible threat.

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What is Canine Distemper? Everyday there is more and more sched-uled. Register now before it’s too late!

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New Lynxes at Wildlife Prairie Park Brenda Heron happily reports on the success-ful introduction of two Canada lynx to theirfenced-in habitat.

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Raja’s Rescue Fortunately for this feline, Deb Johnson put inthe time and effort to fix its fractured femur.

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Feline Conservation FederationVolume 58, Issue 2 • March/April 2014

By Balazs Buzas (balazsbuzas.com)Al Mayya Breeding Centre (AMBC),Al Mayya Sanctuary, Fujairah, UAE

The Arabian Peninsula evokes imagesof enormous skyscrapers towering overthe desert, and a world of exuberant luxu-ry in nearly everyone’s mind, although italso has some unique flora and fauna tooffer. For instance, it gives home to oneof the rarest forms of big cat—a wonderfulcreature surviving in much lower numbersthan the iconic giant panda.

In earlier times, the Arabian leopard(Panthera pardus nimr) might haveoccurred throughout most of the MiddleEast and the Sinai, as well as the ArabianPeninsula. However, its present distribu-tion range is restricted to isolated specksof land within the latter. While thestrongest populations are reportedly foundin Yemen and Oman, the future of thissubspecies is nowhere as secure as in theJebel Samhan Nature Reserve, DhofarMountains, southern Oman— in part as aresult of the kharif (monsoon) that regu-

larly sweeps infrom the IndianOcean. Due tothis additionalsource of water,the area is greenoasis in an other-wise dry and, formost life forms,inhospitable land-scape as if it wasin tropical Africa,and providesample opportuni-ties for grazingfor prey animalsand hiding forfemale leopardstending theircubs.

In the King-dom of SaudiA r a b i a ,researchers from the National WildlifeResearch Center (NWRC) and King SaudUniversity are busily monitoring the localleopard population. According to theirestimates, leopards currently number lessthan one hundred, even though they wereonce widespread in mountainous regionsof this huge country.

Unfortunately, the rapidly developingeconomy and tourism industry all over theArabian Peninsula may cause the remain-ing leopard populations to collapse soon.The building of roads traversing hills andfurther fragment-ing habitats, theincrease of vehicletraffic, and poach-ing make the workof conservationistever more diffi-cult. Similarly tothe situationobserved atMusandam Penin-sula, northernOman, the greatestproblem is thealmost totalabsence of naturalprey. The near-complete disap-pearance of Nubianibex (Capranubiana) and Ara-

bian thar (Arabitragus jayakari) formerlyliving higher up in the hills, as well as ofmountain gazelles (Gazella cora) occupy-ing lower altitude wadis (dry riverbeds),forces leopards to seek alternative foodsources. However, the available quarryconsists of a few free-ranging Bedouingoats, camels, or feral donkeys only,which are insufficient in themselves tosustain a viable population of big cats.Although leopards hunting domesticmammals might relatively easily be(re)accustomed to take natural prey, the

The captive breeding of the species started more than tenyears ago, but the captive population is still under onehundred specimens.

Leopards of Arabia

Hadi Al Hikmani, a young Omani fieldbiologist, and Balazs are checkingpictures of the camera trap that wasset up to monitor leopards in theDhofar Region. Hadi was one of thefirst cat specialists studying Arabianleopards in the wild.

The Dhofar Mountains benefit from kharif (monsoon)that regularly sweep in from the Indian Ocean, supply-ing water that turns this area into a green oasis and pro-vides ample opportunities for grazing for prey animalsand hiding for female leopards tending their cubs.

Feline Conservation FederationVolume 58, Issue 2 • March/April 2014

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reintroduction of gazelles, thar, etc.,would require the eradication of livestockfirst and, in this case, leopards would needto survive without food for years—a virtu-ous circle, with no sight of an easy solu-tion.

In the United Arab Emirates (UAE), thelast wild Arabian leopard was spotted inthe 1990s, and the observation was evenreported in local newspapers. The biggestmountainous sheikhdom, Fujairah liessouth of Oman’s exclave of Musandam.In 2009, the Government of Fujairahdeclared one of the most important leop-ard habitats, Wadi Wurayah, the firstmountain national park in the country.Now the protected area is under thepatronage of His Highness SheikhMohammed bin Hamad bin MohammedAl Sharqi the Crown Prince of Fujairahand extends over 129 square kilometers,with a surrounding buffer zone of 92square kilometers around its periphery. Itis an excellent site for reintroducingnative ungulates, as well as studying anyreappearing small carnivores and felids.

As the effective population size of Ara-bian leopards living in the wild is, even bymost optimistic guess-work, below 250mature individuals, the subspecies is listedas Critically Endangered by the IUCN and

is likely to remain in that category for along time to come.

In order to save this taxon from extinc-tion, a conservation breeding program wasinitiated over a decade ago, based onspecimens live-caught in Yemen. Theoriginal stock and their descendants havemostly been placed in the zoos of Sanaa

and Taiz in Yemen, aswell as in the collec-tion of the BreedingCentre for Endan-gered ArabianWildlife (BCEAW),Sharjah, UAE.Recently, two majorinstitutions in theUAE, Al Ain Zoo andAl Bustan ZoologicalCentre, signed anagreement andexchanged specimens

for reproduction purposes. Also, thebreeding units in the NWRC producemore and more cubs, whereas the partici-pation of Omani and Bahrain breedingcenters is another equally encouragingdevelopment.

Unfortunately, the number of institu-tions involved in the breeding programand of leopards maintained by them is stillvery low, so in the near future new part-ners must be found and the resultsimproved.

To those who wish to know more aboutthe research on Arabian leopards, I highlyrecommend a three-part documentary,“Wild Arabia,” made by the BBC.

The pictures of the captive Arabian leop-ards were taken in the Breeding Centre forEndangered Arabian Wildlife (BCEAW),Sharjah, UAE.

Offspring from the wild Yemen population have been placed in differ-ent institutions to establish a secure breeding population.

The Arabian leopard is one of the smallest of all theleopard subspecies.

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