Distribution of the cheetah (A. jubatus) in north Africa and southwest Asia
FIGURE 2

Historical Range:
  1. The Azerbaijan khans and Armenian and Kartlian (eastern Georgian) princes hunted with trained cheetahs up to the 14th century. In 1472 Josef Barbaro saw the "100" hunting cheetahs of an Armenian prince. The Georgian Chronicles (Kartlis Tskhovreba) place the cheetah in eastern Georgia in the Middle Ages. Fossil remains dating to the middle Pleistocene document the cheetah's presence in the Caucasus region, but it is unclear whether wild cheetahs persisted there in historical times (Vereschagin 1959).

  2. Tristram (1866, cited in Harrison and Bates 1991) noted the presence of a few cheetahs in Gilead, the vicinity of Mt Tabor and the hills of Galilee, but cheetahs have been extinct in this area for over 100 years (Harrison and Bates 1991).

  3. Cheetahs were still found up to 40 years ago in the Atlas mountains of Morocco (Wrogemann 1975).

  4. The last record for the cheetah in Western Sahara dates to when an animal was captured in 1976 and given to the Algiers Zoo.

  5. The last known cheetah in Tunisia was killed in 1960 near Bordj Bowrgiba in the extreme south of the country.

  6. The last observation of a cheetah in Libya was in 1980 in the south-western part of the country bordering Algeria, where cheetahs are still known to exist (K. de Smet pers. comm. 1990, cited in Kraus and Marker-Kraus 1991).

  7. Hardy (1947) mentions seeing two cheetahs in the Sinai desert in 1946.

  8. Last record of the cheetah in Yemen dates to an observation by J.T. Ducker in 1963 in Wadi Mitan (Harrison and Bates 1991).

  9. Last known cheetah in Oman shot near Jibjat, Dhofar in 1977 (Harrison 1983).

  10. Dickson (1949) remarked on the presence of cheetahs in Kuwait.

  11. Cheetahs were reported to be rare in the desert west of Basra, Iraq, in 1926 (Corkill 1929).

  12. Last record of the cheetah in Iraq is a photograph of one killed by a car between the H1 and H2 pumping stations (Harrison and Bates 1991).

  13. Cheetahs were killed in the early 1950s by oil workers near the Saudi Arabian, Jordan and Iraq border intersections (Hatt 1959).

  14. Last record for the cheetah in Saudi Arabia dates to 1973, when two were killed near Ha'il and exhibited for a few days near the Imara palace (Nader 1989).

  15. The last record of the cheetah in India, where the species was formerly widespread, dates to 1947, when the Maharajah of Korwai (misprinted as "Korea" in J. Bombay Nat. Hist. Soc. Vol.47:719) in northern Madhya Pradesh, shot three cheetahs (with two bullets) at night, spot-lighting them with his car head-lights. Taxidermists van Ingen and van Ingen (1948) transmitted the "record of this shoot" in a letter to the Journal of the Bombay Natural History Society. The editors appended a note saying, "The editors were so nauseated by the account of this slaughter that their first impulse was to consign it to the waste-paper basket. Its publication here is intended in the nature of an impeachment rather than any desire on their part to condone or extol the deed."

  16. Cheetahs formerly occurred throughout the dry hills west of the Indus river in Pakistan at the end of the 19th century, but subsequent reports are sparse and they are probably now extinct (T. Roberts in litt. 1993). The last record is of a trade skin obtained in 1972, which reportedly originated from the Mekran border region near Iran (Roberts 1977, Groombridge 1988).

  17. Habibi (1977) and Sayer and van der Zon (1981) believe the cheetah to be extinct in Afghanistan, where it was formerly found throughout the lower steppes up to 1,000 m. Skins were purchased in fur markets in Fara in 1948
  18. and in Herat ® in 1971, but their origin is not known.

  19. The cheetah has disappeared in recent times from the trans-Caspian region (Bannikov and Sokolov 1984). It was probably extirpated from the Kyzylkum desert region south-east of the Aral Sea in the early 1960s, and from the Ustyurt and Mangyshlak regions west and south-west of the Aral by the late 1970s (Ishadov 1992; E. Matjuschkin, E. Mukhina in litt. 1993). The last unconfirmed observation of a cheetah in this region dates to 1982 on the Turkmenistan-Kazakhstan border (s); the last confirmed evidence of a small, established population dates from 1973 in Turkmenistan, further south on the Uzboy dry watercourse on the edge of the Karakum desert (Anon. 1985).

Present Range:

  1. Khoshyeylag I;
  2. Miandasht I + Touran V* complex;
  3. Bahramgor IV;
  4. Moteh V;
  5. Kavir II* complex (Iran);
  6. Tassili N'Ajjer II#;
  7. Ahaggar II (Algeria);
  8. possible cheetah tracks seen in the Qattara Depression, Egypt (Amman 1993);
  9. Adras des Iforas Mts reserve (proposed: Mali);
  10. Aïr & Ténéré VIII (Niger);
  11. Tibesti Massif (not protected: Chad).



© 1996 IUCN - The World Conservation Union

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