The Persian leopard Panthera pardus tulliana (Kitchener et al. 2017) is a subspecies of leopard inhabiting Central and South-West Asia (Bleyhl et al. 2022, Rosen & Mengüllüoğlu 2022). The Persian leopard is currently listed as Endangered (EN C2a(i)) on the IUCN Red List of Endangered Species (Khorozyan 2008). Its distribution range has been substantially reduced (Jacobson et al. 2016), and it now consists of small, isolated populations, of which several are transboundary (Bleyhl et al. 2022, Farhadinia et al. 2022b). There is an urgent need for a concerted conservation approach across its range and international cooperation to address transboundary and range-wide conservation needs of the Persian leopard, its prey species and its habitats. In 2002, the Persian leopard programme in the Caucasus was launched and is still continuing (Khorozyan et al. 2022). Implementation of the long-term leopard conservation and monitoring programmes by WWF teams of Armenia, Azerbaijan and Georgia in cooperation with national governments along with the restoration of the leopard’s wild prey base in these countries has facilitated the Persian leopard recovery in the South Caucasus, specifically in the Zangezur triangle (Khorozyan et al. 2022). In the Caucasus Ecoregion, a Strategy for the Conservation of the Persian Leopard was developed in 2007 and revised in 2017 (Breitenmoser-Würsten et al. 2007, Caucasus Leopard Working Group 2017). This Strategy in- formed the development of the National Action Plans NAPs for the Persian Leopard in Armenia, Azerbaijan and Georgia in 2009 (Caucasus Leopard Working Group 2017) and 2019 (WWF Armenia 2019). The Persian leopard is included under the Bern convention. At the Second Range State Meeting of the Convention on the Conservation of Migratory Species of Wild Animals CMS of the Central Asian Mammals Initiative CAMI in 2019, the Parties agreed to include the Persian Leopard into CAMI (UNEP/CMS/CAMI2/Outcomes). At the 13th meeting of the Conference of Parties to CMS in 2020, CMS parties then adopted the Resolution and Programme of Work PoW (UNEP/CMS/Resolution 11.24 (Rev.COP13)) of the CAMI. Eleven specific points concerning the Persian leopard have been included in the CAMI PoW (Supporting Online Material Table T1). One Activity of high priority is the development of a Range-wide Strategy for the Conservation of the Persian leopard, including also non-CAMI Range States i. e. Armenia, Azerbaijan, Georgia, Iraq and Turkey) and the update of national strategies and conservation action plans. To support the CAMI Range States in developing such a Conservation Strategy, the IUCN Species Survival Commission’s Cat Specialist Group, to- gether with WWF-Germany and the WWF Caucasus Programme, the Michael Succow Foundation Central Asian Desert Initiative CADI, the Center for Large Landscape Conservation, and the CMS Secretariat had originally planned to hold an expert workshop in Tbilisi, Georgia in July 2020 to review the status of the Persian Leopard and issue recommendations for the range-wide conservation of the Persian Leopard (Rosen 2020). This plan could however not be implemented due to the Covid-19 pandemic. Instead, in 2022, a group of cat specialists and conservation experts from all Range States have worked together facilitated by online meetings and electronic communication. In a first step, the conservation status and the state of knowledge on Persian leopard was reviewed by experts from all Range States. The distribution range of the Persian leopard was split into four regions/metapopulations, with one status report produced per region (Fig. 1; Chapters 4–7). Additionally topical chapters have been produced (Chapters 2, 3, and 8–12). These status reports and topical chapters provide an overall view on the knowledge available on Persian leopard across its range and up-to-date information on its distribution and status. These chapters were essential for identifying conservation priorities and drafting the Range-Wide Strategy for the Conservation of the Persian Leopard. This Special Issue is the first part of the process leading to a comprehensive and range-wide approach to Persian leopard conservation based on the IUCN standards for strategic planning for species conservation (IUCN SSC Species Conservation Planning Sub-Committee 2017). Strategic planning for species conservation should be participatory, transparent, and informed by the best available science according to the IUCN SSC. The first step in the Strategic Planning Cycle is “preparing the ground”: defining the conservation unit, building partnerships, identifying stakeholders, securing political support and agreeing on the process and procedures. In a second step, the available important information is compiled in a status review, which serves as an input document for the development of the Conservation Strategy. This Special Issue covers these first two steps in the planning cycle (Fig. 2). The goal of this Special Issue was to compile and critically review all available information relevant to Persian leopard conservation, identify gaps of knowledge, prioritise research questions, and urgent conservation needs, and inform the Range-wide Conservation Strategy for the Persian leopard. A draft of this range-wide Strategy has been developed through a series of online workshops, facilitated by the IUCN SSC Cat Specialist Group, with experts from the range countries and beyond (Fig. 3, Annex I). The draft has been submitted to the CMS Secretariat, and subsequently was to be reviewed by the CMS CAMI Range States. In a meeting in Tbilisi, Georgia, in September 2022, the draft Range-wide Strategy for the Conservation of the Persian Leopard will be undergo a final review and will then be adopted. The meeting is being convened by the Secretariat of the Convention on the Conservation of Migratory Species of Wild Animals (CMS) in close collaboration with the Caucasus Nature Fund (CNF), with support from the German Federal Agency for Nature Conservation (BfN) and funding from the German Federal Ministry of the Environment, Nature Conservation, Nuclear Safety and Consumer Protection (BMUV). The Strategy shall serve as a base for the development/ update of NAPs for the Persian Leopard across its range. National Action Plans are the most important instrument for the implementation of the Conservation Strategy at country level. The Conservation Strategy and related NAPs are guiding documents that need to be evaluated against pro- gress made in reality. The effectiveness of conservation measures needs to be evaluated continuously. This requires monitoring, reporting, and, as needed, revision of the Strategy or NAPs. Several Range Countries already have developed NAPs for the Persian leopard (e.g. Armenia, Azerbaijan and Georgia) and are invited to review and if needed revise their NAPs based on the new available information and the up-to-date range-wide Strategy. Countries with no NAP are encouraged to develop one. A step-by-step guidance for the development of a NAP in a participatory approach is provided by Breitenmoser et al. (2015). The regular CAMI Range States Meetings should be used to review the implementation of the Persian Leopard Conservation Strategy and to decide about possible revision and adaptation of the Strategy. The CMS CAMI POW, the Conservation Strategy and the information compiled in this Cat News Special Issue provide a comprehensive framework for the conservation not only of the Persian Leopard, but also of its habitat and prey species and enabling its coexistence with local communities.

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Supporting Online Material

Table T1

Among large felids, the Anatolian/Persian leopard Panthera pardus tulliana is the only extant felid that still occurs in Anatolia, Caucasus, Middle East and Central Asia. The Caspian tiger P. tigris vigrata, and the Asiatic lion P. leo persica have already gone extinct and the Asiatic cheetah Acinonyx jubatus venaticus is Critically Endangered. Persian leopard populations are significantly reduced in size however they continue to survive in fragmented populations.

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Persian leopards Panthera pardus tulliana, once widespread across Western and Central Asia, currently only occupy a fraction of their historical range. Identifying areas for restoring, connecting, and expanding extant populations is therefore impor- tant to safeguard this subspecies. Here, we used a large dataset of Persian leopard occurrences from 11 countries to map Persian leopard habitat across its historical range. We identified widespread potentially suitable habitat (about 1,290,000 km²), particularly in mountain regions. We highlight five clusters of habitat patches that could potentially host leopard metapopulations: the Caucasus (Armenia, Azerbaijan, Georgia, Iran, Russia, Turkey), the Alborz-Kopetdag Mountains (Iran, Turkmenistan), the Taurus Mountains (Turkey), the Zagros Mountains (Iran, Iraq, Turkey), and the Hin- du Kush-Western Himalayas (Afghanistan, Pakistan). Further, we identified 174 core habitat patches with more than 250 km² of highly suitable habitat. Most of the core habitat patch area is found in Iran (204,005 km²; 38%), Turkey (100,651 km²; 19%), and Pakistan (51,868 km²; 10%), highlighting the importance of these countries for Persian leopard conservation. We then assessed the proportion of core patch area that is currently protected (9%) and updated the historical and current distribution maps, using all information gathered in this Special Issue. This revealed that 151 of all 174 potential habitat patches we found were historically occupied (i.e., overlapped with our historical distribution; 87%) and 53 patches are likely currently occupied (i.e., overlapped with our extant distribution; 30%). Finally, we mapped potential corridors among core habitat patches and identified three priority regions for population recovery, with clusters of unoccupied patches that have a high connectivity to currently occupied patches: the southern Caucasus, the southern Zagros Mountains, and the Hindu Kush-Spin Ghar. In sum, our analyses suggest a major potential for larger, viable Persian leopard metapopulations within their historical range, given conservation measures are implemented to halt and reverse ongoing population declines and local extinctions.

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Supporting Online Material

Table T1

The Persian leopard Panthera pardus tulliana has been Critically Endangered in the Caucasus Ecoregion. Therefore, its regional status assessment is a timely and essential measure to present the current situation and describe its changes due to existing conservation efforts. This report is aimed to address these issues by incorporating all available leopard records in the Caucasus Ecoregion from 2000–2021. The range of this big cat is confined to the mountain ridges of the Lesser Caucasus, Greater Caucasus, Talysh Mountains and their branches, and is heavily fragmented due to human activities. A continuous monitoring through camera-trapping shows that the minimum numbers of adult leopards are 3–9 in Armenia and 6–17 in Azerbaijan.There are very few individuals recorded in the Turkish and Russian parts of the Caucasus and only one confirmed individual is known from Georgia. Iran has been the main country for leopard survival in the Caucasus containing the largest population in the region, but of unknown size. Long-term and large-scale conservation activities coordinated by WWF and its partners led to the recovery and breeding of a small population in the Zangezur triangle, including the extreme south of Armenia, south-east of Azerbaijan’s Nakhchyvan Autonomous Republic, and the adjoining part of north-western Iran. Some juveniles originated from this triangle disperse to other areas and potentially are able to re-establish new populations but such events are so far rare and documented only for males. Lack of breeding females and insufficient connectivity between the key areas of the range are the main problems for today’s population of the leopard in the Caucasus.

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The Persian leopard Panthera pardus tulliana is an endangered large felid living in mountainous landscapes of the Caucasus, Southwest Asia and parts of Central Asia. In this paper, we review available literature to update our information on the status, population, ecology, threats, and management recommendations in regard to this big cat in the region. Most of the Alborz and Kopetdag Ecoregions harbour the largest population of Persian leopard with some protected areas having the highest densities of these carnivores. A total of 348 to 440 leopards are guessed to exist in the region, making it one of the largest continuous leopard hotspots across Asia. Almost 80% of the population exists in Iran, followed by Turkmenistan which holds the second largest Persian leopard population, while the leopard population in Kazakhstan mainly depends on transboundary transient individuals from Turkmenistan. Habitat types vary from Irano-Turanian landscapes to highland scrublands and Hyrcanian temperate forests, with urial Ovis vignei, bezoar goat Capra aegagrus and wild pig Sus scrofa being the main prey of leopard. Resident males occupy a meanhome range of 103.4 ± SE 51.8 km² which is larger than the ones observed in other studies of male Asian leopards. Persian leopards occur continuously across the Alborz and Kopetdag mountains ranges, and face multiple anthropogenic threats such as: (i) inadequate livestock grazing or husbandry practices; (ii) illegal killing of leopards; (iii) and wild prey depletion. Livestock grazing is commonplace in the range countries, particularly inside protected areas. Conflict mitigation measures in Iran,and generally in the range countries, should be implemented at least in the areas with high leopard mortality provoked by livestock losses. Also, given the occasional occurrence of problem individuals responsible for a disproportionate impact on human interests, particularly in northeastern Iran, we suggest to apply selective management which would target on specific individuals and become effective for conflict mitigation.

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Persian leopard in its western range is distributed in Iran, Iraq and Turkey. The habitat in this region is mainly characterised by the Zagros Mts. as well as isolated mountain ranges in central and south-eastern Iran. The species has been studied intensively only in a handful of protected areas and the remaining information comes from sporadic and opportunistic sightings. Importantly, the status of the species is widely unknown in southern Turkey, northern Iraq and parts of western, south-eastern and central Iran. We collected all available contemporary (> year 2000) leopard occurrences as well as information on the species ecology and threats in this range to assess its status. After filtering for repeated or unreliable data, we identified 438 occurrences classified based on their reliability levels C1 (verified observations, n= 243), C2 (confirmed, n = 107) and C3 (unconfirmed, n = 88). Mapping the potential distribution of the species based on this information and expert knowledge resulted in around 153,400 km² of habitat in Iran and Iraq, mainly along the Zagros Mts. The presence of the leopard is highly probable in another ca. 70,500 km², which requires further investigations. The density in the few protected areas with intensive camera trapping survey was estimated between 1.0-1.9 leopard/100 km². According to our assessment,the main threats to the species are retaliatory or precautionary killing by livestock pastoralists, prey depletion and road accidents. Moreover, given the increasing fragmentation of leopard habitat, identification and protection of (transboundary) corridors are conservation priorities.

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The present report uses published and grey literature and expert observations to review the distribution and conservation status of the leopard Panthera pardus in Afghanistan, Pakistan, Tajikistan and Uzbekistan. The study confirmed the presence of the species in the central and eastern parts of Afghanistan, in lower Himalayan range and south western borders of Pakistan, and did not identify confirmed contemporary records (> 2000) from Tajikistan and Uzbekistan where nowadays the species is believed to be extinct (Tajikistan) or quasi-extinct (Uzbekistan). The present study provides novel information on the species distribution in Pakistan outside the Himalayan range, and confirms its wider distribution in Afghanistan. The leopard population size in the assessed region remains unknown. Poaching has been identified as the one outstanding, most critical threat that significantly affects leopards on a large scale and across all the assessment area. In north Pakistan and east Afghanistan this threat very likely results from the rapid loss of its preferred forest habitat and primary natural prey-base. Infrastructural development such as fences along the inter- national Pakistan-Afghanistan border presumably contribute at further fragmenting the leopard habitat and isolate the species in more or less disjunct sub-populations vulnerable to depleted genetic variation and chronic stress. While across the region science and awareness are increasingly supported by proactive and alerting conservationists, the implementation of active and effective conservation measures remains vastly underdeveloped and is complicated by regional political instabilities, such as in Afghanistan, where the recent change in governing leadership might require new approaches to support wildlife conservation.

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Human-predator conflict can significantly affect rural livelihoods and the survival of many predator species worldwide. The Persian leopard Panthera pardus tulliana is not an exception, and its distribution range has markedly shrunk to a few Middle Eastern and Central Asian countries. Economic growth and various human activities such as livestock husbandry practices are increasingly overlapping with leopard habitats, making human-leopard conflicts inevitable. Such conflicts are particularly common in areas with reduced wild prey availability, which force leopards to prey on domestic animals. As a result, leopards have often been killed in retaliation or as a preventive measure to reduce livestock losses. To ensure the long-term population persistence of leopards, it is crucial to mitigate conflicts by promoting human-leopard coexistence in shared landscapes. In this paper, we describe potential approaches and related case studies where efforts have been made to foster positive interactions between humans and leopards in their range countries. We synthesized published evidence and suggest practical interventions, including: (i) protective collars for livestock, (ii) predator-proof corrals, (iii) deterrents, (iv) financial incentives and compensation programmes, and (v) livestock guarding dogs and herding. We underline that the success of these interventions will require systematic monitoring and evaluation plans allowing the objective assessment of outcomes to facilitate informed and effective management decisions.  

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Large carnivores have extensive spatial requirements, with ranges that often span geopolitical borders. Consequently, management of transboundary populations is subject to several political jurisdictions, often with heterogeneity in conservation challenges. In West Asia and the Caucasus, the endangered Persian leopard Panthera pardus tulliana occurs with transboundary populations spanning 13 countries with 26% of the extant ranges in borderlands. Overall, in 10 of 13 countries the majority of the remaining leopard range is in borderlands, and thus in most countries conservation of this subspecies is dependent on transboundary collaboration. We nominated a total of 10 key transboundary areas that are of high importance for the survival of Persian leopards, of which only one has an ongoing transboundary initiative. We highlighted the conservation challenge and potential opportunities for transboundary conservation of Persian leopards in the region.

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The long-term survival of the Persian leopard Panthera pardus tulliana requires concerted regional conservation efforts. Understanding occurrence patterns and population trends of the leopard and its prey are key prerequisite for planning conservation interventions and ensuring their effectiveness. However, systematic monitoring for these purposes is scarce across the Persian leopard range, despite progress towards more systematic monitoring in some parts (e.g., the Caucasus Ecoregion). Using the example of the monitoring system in the Caucasus, we propose a framework for range-wide monitoring of Persian leopard and its prey. We suggest focusing on 297 units of 25x25 km², spread across eleven range countries. Adopting a coordinated monitoring strategy and ensuring information exchange will assist range countries to better achieve their conservation targets, including the objectives of the regional conservation initiatives such as the Convention on the Conservation of Migratory Species of Wild Animals CMS Central Asian Mammals Initiative CAMI and its Range-Wide Strategy for the Conservation of the Persian Leopard. More broadly, a systematic monitoring framework will be crucial for the identification of knowledge gaps and priority areas to ramp up conservation actions for safeguarding megafauna in this region.

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A reintroduction project has started in Russia in 2007 with the goal to create a Persian leopard population nucleus in the northern part of its historical range, where the species disappeared due to direct and indirect human influence in mid-20^th century. A small resident group should give opportunity of breeding also for leopards migrating naturally from the south. The reintroduction will give the opportunity to re-integrate leopard genes accumulated in zoos into the wild population. The project includes stages of breeding leopard pairs originated from zoos in a special center; training youngling to make them able to survive in the wild, checking their readiness, releasing those who are ready, post-release monitoring with GPS-VHF collars and field surveys of kill-sites and other important places. Modelling the habitat in its present stage is done when new release sites are planned. Nowadays, two release sites work, the North-West Caucasian and Central Caucasian (Ossetian). Successful survival of released animals during a full year cycle was confirmed, but breeding was not observed so far.  

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The Persian Leopard Breeding Programme together with the Felid TAG of the EAZA is responsible for securing a self-sustaining captive population with the highest possible genetic diversity of this threatened leopard subspecies. The ex situ population is serving as a source for breeding leopards in the Sochi Breeding Center in the Russian Caucasus, but also aims to introduce further new founders into the captive population. Multiple tasks are carried out, including capacity building, assessing and improving the holding conditions and husbandry in institutions as well as facilitating the preservation of genes of underrepresented bloodlines through reproductive re- search and assistant reproductive techniques.

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