Arabian Leopard in Oman

High up in the Jabal Samhan Nature Reserve, the world's smallest big cat stands at a precipice.

The mountainous reserve in Dhofar, southern Oman, is a world away from the nearby city of Salalah, which looks out over the Arabian Sea. Every year, far below, the coastal desert goes through a spectacular transformation, turning green in the summer monsoon and filling with temporary lakes, rivers and waterfalls. But the phenomenon doesn't touch these elevations. Up on Jabal Samhan it's arid and hostile, and it's here the Arabian leopard calls home.

Of the world's eight leopard subspecies, the Arabian leopard is among the rarest, and it's thought fewer than 200 adults live in the wild, says Urs Breitenmoser, co-chair of the Cat Specialist Group at the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN). However, that figure is uncertain -- data is hard to come by for this elusive creature, more often viewed through a camera trap than with the naked eye.

The leopard once lived across the Arabian Peninsula, but today the IUCN lists only Oman, Yemen, Saudi Arabia and possibly Israel as its range -- and there have been no recent sightings in either Saudi Arabia or Israel. Human-wildlife conflict, the hunting of its prey species and habitat loss are all factors in the Arabian leopard's precipitous decline.

The big cat is vulnerable to extinction, but dedicated conservationists are working to ensure it doesn't share the fate of the lion and the cheetah in the region, and continues to have a future.

CNN news source: https://edition.cnn.com/2022/01/19/middleeast/arabian-leopards-oman-conservation-spc-intl/index.html

Arabian leopard living in Dhofar region, Oman