Mapping the distribution and habitat of Persian leopard across its historical range

Abstract

Persian leopards Panthera pardus tulliana, once widespread across Western and Central Asia, currently only occupy a fraction of their historical range. Identifying areas for restoring, connecting, and expanding extant populations is therefore important to safeguard this subspecies. Here, we used a large dataset of Persian leopard occurrences from 11 countries to map Persian leopard habitat across its historical range. We identified widespread potentially suitable habitat (about 1,290,000 km²), particularly in mountain regions. We highlight five clusters of habitat patches that could potentially host leopard metapopulations: the Caucasus (Armenia, Azerbaijan, Georgia, Iran, Russia, Turkey), the Alborz-Kopetdag Mountains (Iran, Turkmenistan), the Taurus Mountains (Turkey), the Zagros Mountains (Iran, Iraq, Turkey), and the Hindu Kush-Western Himalayas (Afghanistan, Pakistan). Further, we identified 174 core habitat patches with more than 250 km² of highly suitable habitat. Most of the core habitat patch area is found in Iran (204,005 km²; 38%), Turkey (100,651 km²; 19%), and Pakistan (51,868 km²; 10%), highlighting the importance of these countries for Persian leopard conservation. We then assessed the proportion of core patch area that is currently protected (9%) and updated the historical and current distribution maps, using all information gathered in this Special Issue. This revealed that 151 of all 174 potential habitat patches we found were historically occupied (i.e., overlapped with our historical distribution; 87%) and 53 patches are likely currently occupied (i.e., overlapped with our extant distribution; 30%). Finally, we mapped potential corridors among core habitat patches and identified three priority regions for population recovery, with clusters of unoccupied patches that have a high connectivity to currently occupied patches: the southern Caucasus, the southern Zagros Mountains, and the Hindu Kush-Spin Ghar. In sum, our analyses suggest a major potential for larger, viable Persian leopard metapopulations within their historical range, given conservation measures are implemented to halt and reverse ongoing population declines and local extinctions.