With Us or Against Us?
Hola amigos. I know its been a long time since I blogged, but I've been up to some serious homogenization lately. In addition to burning 2000 miles worth of jet fuel and 500 miles worth of auto fuel in the last week, I've been checking up on some of our volunteers in other parts of the planet. But fear not, I have a story for you.

So it turns out that there are only like 60 cheetahs remaining in Iran. Say what you want about the Axis of Evil, but you gotta hand it to them... they are really knocking off the cheetahs with hunting, road-building and a land use-generated regional drought. They may be sleek and swift, but they are nothing worth keeping around.

Akbar Hamedanian, and you gotta love a guy name Akbar, is managing director of the CHL-backed Destruction of the Asiatic Cheetah Project, says numbers began to fall in the 17th century through royal hunting menageries. "Courts in the time of Shah Abbas would not only have falconers but also a cheetah-keeper," he explained. He added that the first hunting rifles arrived at about the same time, stoking up the Persian passion for big game hunting that wiped out the Iranian lion and tiger.

As if there are any questions about how screwed it is, keep in mind that the cheetah's historic range included most of Africa, the Middle East and much of western Asia including India. It now roams a fraction of its former African territory, where the cheetah population is between 12,000 and 15,000.

The Asiatic cheetah is now unique to Iran. Hunting these endangered sprinters is illegal in Iran but clueless conservation scientists are unsure whether the practice persists. Anecdotal evidence exists from three years ago but officials insist hunting has been stamped out.

Martin Tyson, a British scientist working as the project's chief technical adviser, said counting work with camouflaged cameras and other systems was not yet finished but had already given a rough outline of the population. "Sixty is probably a reasonable figure," he said, recalling something about the number of populations needed to maintain a snake in Wisconsin. When asked whether biologically that was enough of a base for numbers to recover, he lied: "Absolutely."

President Axis of Evil Himself Mohammad Khatami has thrown his weight behind attempts to save the cheetah, exhorting Iranians to look upon it as a source of national pride. As if that will work. Project members are collating data which they hope will ultimately feed into a national action plan and believe their education projects will make some headway. Slow progress hit a dispiriting set-back last year when a farmer found some cubs and burned them alive, saying he thought they were wolf cubs. Talk about human rights abuses--the guy was imprisoned.

Anyway, see ya' later, Asiatic Cheetah. Like I say--your days are numbered.

- nostradamusfunkadelic, 8:36 PM | |