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Camera Traps Captured  A Cheetah in Miandasht

Oct 20, 2004- A cheetah was pictured in a camera trapping survey in Miandasht Wildlife Refuge. It was assumed that following the extensive presence of livestock till last spring, the cheetahs have left the area. 
The animal seems to be a young male which was pictured while patrolling near a waterhole at the northern border of the reserve where is one of the main points for the gazelles. It indicates the successful efforts in tracking surveys over the past 8 months by ICS wildlife staff to identify the cheetah hotspots and routes aiming to obtain a basic knowledge on their seasonal range and possibly to census the present population.

"It is so difficult to do a camera trapping survey in plain habitats" Mohammad Farhadinia, ICS director said. "Surveys have shown that the cheetahs in most of the Iranian reserves used to move through the valleys in order to obtain a prey, but since Miandasht is perfectly a plain habitat with a limited range composed of hilly terrains, accordingly it was so difficult to predict the cheetah's routes to set the camera traps." ICS director who was pretty busy with Miandasht Cheetah Monitoring Project over the past year added "We had no option to identify their routes first based on their tracks and scats and since the area is covered by thick bushes in lots of places, we tried to find the cheetahs signs in several tracking bases where we supposed are regularly visited by them. Meanwhile, we made an effort to predict the cheetah's movement patterns based on the gazelle migration as the main herbivore inside the area."

Mohammad Farhadinia said "It was a great job to do survey using just 3 cameras, but due to precise tracking during several months, the cameras pictured the cheetah plus a caracal and a wolf in the first effort to set the cameras in just 3 weeks. It was for the first time that the caracal was reported from the area "

ICS is now continuing the camera trapping survey in Miandasht willing to picture the other cheetahs, particularly a mother with her cub reported several times by the wardens and local people and welcomes any support for more camera traps to work much effectively.