454 M. S. Farhadinia et al.


TABLE 1 Details of an Endangered and three Critically Endangered leopard Panthera pardus subspecies with populations in borderlands of continental Asia.


Subspecies


Endangered Persian P. pardus saxicolor


Critically Endangered Indochinese P. pardus delacouri Arabian P. pardus nimr


Amur leopard P. pardus orientalis Total


No. of extant range countries


13 5


4 3


231


Borderline length (km)


3,415 1,740 248


47 5,450


Total area of subspecies range (km2)


933,597 159,000


22,720 9,270


1,124,587 1There are two leopard subspecies in both China and Russia, and therefore the total number of countries is 23 rather than 25.


Borderland area, km2 (% of subspecies overall range)


247,035 (26) 92,220 (58)


5,332 (23) 9,270 (100)


353,857 (31)


Arabian leopard


There are small populations of the Arabian leopard in Oman, Saudi Arabia, Israel, and Yemen (Fig. 1, Table 2). Until relatively recently, this subspecies also occurred in Jordan and the United Arab Emirates, in both of which the populations would have been partly transbound- ary with Israel and Oman, respectively (Jacobson et al., 2016). The main stronghold for the subspecies is the Dhofar Mountains of Oman, which comprise three con- tiguous mountain blocks: Jabal Samhan in the east, Jabal Al Qara in the centre and Jabal Al Qamar in the west, the latter contiguous with the mountains of Hawf in south- east Yemen. Occasional records of leopard mortality indicate some small populations across the inner parts of Yemen. The largest population nucleus of up to 30 Arabian leopards is believed to inhabit Jabal Samhan, which is c. 150 km from the Oman–Yemen border. A fur- ther 22–28 leopards occur across Jabal Al Qara and Jabal Al Qamar, with individuals recorded up to 16 km from the Oman–Yemen border (Spalton & Al Hikmani, 2014). Across the Oman–Yemen border in Hawf, leopards were recorded in low numbers in 2011 (Khorozyan et al., 2014). Elsewhere, there are thought to be a few scattered areas of extant range for the Arabian leopard along the border between Yemen and Saudi Arabia (Zafar-ul Islam et al., 2018).


Amur leopard


There is only one population of the Amur leopard (Fig. 1) shared between Russia’s Primorskii Krai and China’s Jilin Province (Jacobson et al., 2016; Feng et al., 2017). There are also occasional reports, based on snow tracking, from North Korea (Jacobson et al., 2016). With no evidence of Amur leopards occurring elsewhere, this single transbound- ary population of 70–108 individuals represents the global population of this subspecies (Vitkalova et al., 2018). After concerted conservation effort, theAmur leopard population


is increasing in China, and some reproduction has been documented 50 km from the Russian border (Wang et al., 2016).


Discussion


The importance of borderlands for leopard conservation Arelatively high proportion (23–100%) of the ranges of each leopard subspecies occurs in borderlands. The Amur and Indochinese leopards are most dependent on borderlands as the majority of their remaining distribution occurs within these areas. The Persian and Arabian leopards have the ma- jority of their remaining distribution beyond borderlands as most of their populations are within Iran and Afghanistan for the Persian leopard, and Oman and possibly Yemen for the Arabian leopard. Transboundary conservation initiatives have been en-


dorsed for many of Asian leopard subspecies (Knight et al., 2011; Askerov et al., 2015; Farhadinia et al., 2015; Feng et al., 2017). However, only two transboundary initia- tives are actively working to facilitate leopard conservation across borders, in the Caucasus (Askerov et al., 2015) and in the Russian Far East and north-east China (Feng et al., 2017; Vitkalova et al., 2018). Transboundary conservation was not considered in the latest IUCN assessment of leopards (Stein et al., 2016). Our review highlights the importance of encouraging conservation agencies to work across inter- national borders in Asia.


Conservation challenges in borderlands


Previous studies have highlighted poaching of leopards and their prey, and habitat loss, as themain reasons for the decline of leopards across most of their range in Asia (Farhadinia et al., 2015; Jacobson et al., 2016; Rostro-García et al., 2016; Wang et al., 2016; Zafar-ul Islam et al., 2018). We identify four main challenges for the conservation of transboundary populations of Asian leopards: (1) different levels of legal


Oryx, 2021, 55(3), 452–460 © The Author(s), 2020. Published by Cambridge University Press on behalf of Fauna & Flora International doi:10.1017/S0030605319000693


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