The Arabian leopard (Panthera pardus nimr) is a leopard subspecies native to the Arabian Peninsula. It has been listed as Critically Endangered on the IUCN Red List since 1996 as fewer than 200 wild individuals were estimated to be alive in 2006. The population is severely fragmented. Subpopulations are isolated and not larger than 50 mature individuals. The population is thought to decline continuously.
The Arabian leopard is the smallest leopard subspecies. It was tentatively affirmed as a distinct subspecies by genetic analysis of a single wild leopard from South Arabia, which appeared most closely related to the African leopard.
Taxonomic history
Felis pardus nimr was the scientific name proposed by Wilhelm Hemprich and Christian Gottfried Ehrenberg in 1830 for a leopard from Arabia. Panthera pardus jarvisi, proposed by Reginald Innes Pocock in 1932, was based on a leopard skin from the Sinai Peninsula.
In the early 1990s, a phylogeographic analysis was carried out based on tissue samples from Asian and African leopards. P. p. jarvisi was provisionally grouped with the Persian leopard, as tissue samples were not available. Molecular biologists tentatively proposed in 2001 to group the Sinai leopard with P. p. nimr, as again tissue samples were not available.
Characteristics
The Arabian leopard's fur varies from pale yellow to deep golden, tawny or grey and is patterned with rosettes. Males have a total length of including long tails and weigh about ; females are long including long tails and weigh around . The Arabian leopard is smaller than both African and Persian leopards. It is however the largest cat in the Arabian Peninsula.
Distribution and habitat
The geographic range of the Arabian leopard is poorly understood but generally considered to be limited to the Arabian Peninsula, including Egypt's Sinai Peninsula. It lives in mountainous uplands and hilly steppes, but seldom moves to open plains, desert or coastal lowlands. It prefers well-vegetated terrain that is difficult for humans to reach. Since the late 1990s, leopards were not recorded in Egypt. One individual was killed in the Elba Protected Area in 2014.
Modeling suggests that the species accumulated genetic and phenotypic differences from its conspecifics at a series of glacial maxima during the last glacial period in a Yemen refugium, from where it expanded elsewhere in the Holocene warming following the expansion of suitable landscape types. As humans expanded as well, they eventually restricted the source populations of the leopard to an area intersecting eastern Yemen and western Oman today.
Until the late 1960s, the Arabian leopard was widely distributed in the mountains along both the coasts of the Red Sea and Arabian Sea. In Saudi Arabia, leopard habitat is estimated to have decreased by around 90% since the beginning of the 19th century. Of 19 reports obtained from informants between 1998 and 2003, only four are confirmed including sightings in one location in the Hijaz Mountains and three locations in the Asir Mountains, with the most recent record in 2002 south of Biljurashi. No leopard was recorded during a camera trapping survey conducted from 2002 to 2003. Although the leopard is officially protected in the country, its remaining range is not encompassed by protected areas.
In the United Arab Emirates, the Arabian leopard was first sighted in 1949 by Wilfred Thesiger in Jebel Hafeet. The exact status of the leopard in the country is unclear. It is either extinct or very rare in the eastern region, with occasional sightings being reported in places like Wadi Wurayah. Before the end of the 20th century, sightings were reported in the areas of Jebel Hafeet and Al-Hajar Mountains.
In Oman, leopards were reported to have occurred in the Hajar Mountains until the late 1970s. The largest confirmed sub-population inhabits the Dhofar Mountains in the country's southeast. In the Jabal Samhan Nature Reserve, 17 individual adult leopards were identified between 1997 and 2000 using camera traps. Leopards were also sighted in the Musandam Peninsula, particularly Ras Musandam. The home range of Arabian leopards in this reserve is roughly estimated at for males and for females. The Dhofar mountain range is considered the best habitat for leopards in the country. This rugged terrain provides shelters, shade and trapped water, and harbors a wide variety of prey species, in particular in escarpments and narrow wadis.