IUCN / SSC Cat Specialist Group - Digital Cat Library |
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| Mallon, D.; Weinberg, P.; Kopaliani, N. | |
| Status of the prey species of the leopard in the Caucasus | |
| 2007 Cat News (Special Issue 2): 22-27 | |
The severe economic crisis that followed major political and social changes in 1992 in the former Soviet Union, together with a weakening of formerly effective protection systems resulted in a sharp rise in hunting of wild ungulates and exploitation of natural resources. As a consequence, turs, bezoar goat, wild sheep, chamois, red deer and roe deer have all declined in abundance over the past 15 years, their ranges have been reduced and in many cases are becoming fragmented. In Iran, the decline in ungulate numbers has taken place over a longer timescale, since 1978. The only ungulate species in the ecoregion that has been relatively unaffected is wild boar. The effects on smaller mammalian prey such as porcupines and hares are unknown. The precise extent of species declines is difficult to evaluate in many cases because of inadequacies in baseline data and lack of monitoring programmes. The best populations of ungulates survive in a few protected areas such as the Kavkasky, Khosrov, Kazbegi and Zakataly Reserves and remote areas of Dagestan. The extent to which fragmented and depleted prey populations at an ecoregion-wide scale can support viable leopard populations, and over what time scale, needs urgently to be assessed. |
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