From a hundred animals in 2010, the cheetah population in Iran has grown to 12 this year. It is one of the last countries in the world where the feline is in the wild. The situation is critical.
Iran has only 12 cheetahs on its soil against fifty in 2017, the Iranian Deputy Minister of the Environment warned on Sunday. He thus qualified as “extremely critical” the situation of this feline threatened with extinction.
“There are currently only nine males and three females against a hundred in 2010 and their situation is extremely critical,” said Tasnim the vice-minister in charge of the natural environment and biodiversity, Hassan Akbari.
These animals are victims of drought, hunters or run over by cars, especially in the central desert where they live, he said.
Insufficient prevention measures
The cheetah subspecies “Acinonyx jubatus venaticus”, or Asian cheetah, found in Iran, is classified as critically endangered by the International Union for the Conservation of Nature.
“The measures we have taken to increase the protection and reproduction (of the animal) and the installation of road signs were not enough to save this species,” added the deputy minister.
Supported by the United Nations, Iran began a program to protect these mammals in 2001. In 2014, the Iranian football team caused a sensation during the World Cup in Brazil by making the head appear watermarked. of an Asian cheetah on his swimsuits.
Extinct from Africa and Asia
Iran is one of the last countries in the world where these felines live in the wild as the presence of the cheetah, the fastest animal in the world with peaks at 120 km / h, once extended from the eastern reaches from India to the Atlantic coast of Senegal and to the extreme south of the African continent.
If they are still found in numbers in parts of southern Africa, these big cats have practically disappeared from North Africa and Asia.
In 2019, the UN body expert in biodiversity sounded the alarm, considering that the collapse of living things is racing at a rate never seen before.