Big cats in borderlands 455


PLATE 1 Photographic evidence of Asian leopards in borderlands: (a) Persian leopard P. pardus saxicolor with amputated leg along the Armenia–Azerbaijan–Iran border in the Caucasus (Photo: WWF), (b) an Arabian leopard P. pardus nimr in the Hawf, on the Yemen–Oman border (Photo: Foundation for Endangered Wildlife Yemen), (c) a Persian leopard in north-east Iran, with Turkmenistan’s mountains in the background (Photo: WildCRU/ Future4Leopards Foundation), (d) a Persian leopard after killing two domestic goats along the Iran–Iraq border (Photo: Iran Department of Environment/R. Khoshfarman), (e, f) Indochinese leopards P. pardus delacouri near the Cambodia– Viet Nam border (Photo: Panthera/ WildCRU/WWF Cambodia/Ministry of Environment), and Amur leopards P. pardus orientalis along the Russia–China border in (g) China (Photo: Beijing Normal University) and (h) Russia (Photo: FGBU/ Land of the Leopard).


protection and management across national jurisdictions, (2) military activities and armed conflict, (3)poaching for illegal international wildlife trade and (4) infrastructure pro- jects, such as road development. There are varied levels of legal protection and management


for leopardsacrossnational jurisdictions andprotectionby law across most range countries, with substantial monetary fines and/or imprisonment for illegal killing (Table 2). However, there were time lags of several decades for legal protection in the adjacent countries in several large borderland populations, such as Thailand–Myanmar and Iran–Iraq–Turkey (Table 2). Neighbouring countriesmay have different agendas, technical capacities, and resources available for leopard conservation, potentially hindering the recovery of transboundary pop- ulations. For example, the governments of Turkmenistan,


Kazakhstan and Afghanistan (Persian leopard) and Cambo- dia, China, Myanmar and Laos (Indochinese leopard) have not prioritized or supported conservation action plans for the leopard, which hampers conservation efforts made by neighbouring states. In Oman, conservation of the Arabian leopard benefits from strong government agencies, law en- forcement and compensation programmes in cases of live- stock depredation. In adjacent Yemen, however, where there is an ongoing armed conflict, there is little or no active conser- vation or protection of leopards. Military activities and armed conflicts occur within the borderland ranges of all leopard subspecies except for the Amur leopard. Political unrest compromises law enforce- ment and effective conservation. Potential effects of mili- tary activities and armed conflicts on leopards and the


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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