This article was originally published in Kazakh in National Geographic Kazakhstan. While efforts have been made to ensure the translation’s accuracy, some nuances from the original text may not be fully captured. See the original article here: https://nationalgeographic.kz/2024/08/12/barys-qazaqstangha-qajta-orala-ma/
Photo: Joel Sartori, National Geograpic
On a cold October night, in a remote steppe halfway up the Garabogaz gol depression in Turkmenistan, a basin separated by a thin land strip from the Caspian Sea, a sliver of moon shines on a small group of people huddling under a starry sky. Eziz Tanghriguliev, the head of the Balkan Department of Environment in Turkmenistan, motions to turn our car headlights off. There are apparently three poachers hiding somewhere. Eziz and Hosein, one of the rangers, race up ahead. Search lights flicker in the distance. The wind is howling, and it is viciously cold. After a fruitless search the little group gives up.
What brings us here in this remote and harsh landscape?
Persian leopards.
Among large felids, the Persian leopard Panthera pardus tulliana is the only occurring in Anatolia, Caucasus, Middle East, and Central Asia. Having lost more than 70% of its historic range, which in Central Asia, historically included Tajikistan and Uzbekistan, the Persian leopard survives in largely small, fragmented populations. The largest population, somewhere between 500 to 700 individuals, is found in Iran. Turkmenistan follows with a population that likely does not exceed 60 individuals. Leopards in Turkmenistan mostly live in the borderline areas along the Kopetdag and Sunt Hasardag mountain ranges between Turkmenistan and Iran as well as Badhyz State Nature Reserve on the border with Iran and Afghanistan.
In 2019, a small breeding population of 7-10 leopards was confirmed by camera-traps in the Balkan range (Uly and Kichi) in northwest Turkmenistan and several individuals continue to be reported since along the Garabogaz-gol depression. Some go to Kazakhstan.
In fact, in autumn 2018, in the Ustyurt State Nature Reserve camera traps for the first time recorded the presence of a Persian leopard in Kazakhstan. Until the end of the 20th century, the leopard was never observed in Kazakhstan. It is only during the last 20 years that there have been three reliable leopard records: unfortunately, of illegally killed animals. The first one was in in 2000 in Zhambyl region. Two more followed in Mangystau in 2007 and 2015. The photos all looked the same: snared animals displayed as trophies by grinning men.
This map shows the places where the leopard has been spotted.
Source: National Geographic
It is not until after the re-appearance of the leopard in 2018 that the species was recognized as extant in Kazakhstan: however shortly after being listed in the Red Book of Kazakhstan in 2021, the leopard that school children in Mangistau proudly called Tay Sheri (the “Spirit of the Mountains”), was found dead near Beyneu, some 220 km north of its recorded presence in the Ustyurt reserve. The cause of death could not be definitively confirmed but to this day many believe Tay Sheri was killed.
The Persian leopard is considered the largest of all the subspecies of leopards. Males can weigh up to 90 kg, while the slender females, easily confused with young males, weigh up to only 60 kg. Leopards tend to be mostly crepuscular or nocturnal, and as naturally very shy animals, they will at all costs try to avoid crossing paths with humans.
In Turkmenistan, Persian leopards are found from arid landscapes to highland scrublands, across a wide range of altitudes, from below sea level in Garabogaz gol to the Kopetdag peaks. Vegetation of the areas where leopards are recorded is typical for cold desert ecosystems and includes the sub-shrubs, wormwood, pistachio woodlands, and junipers.
Leopards also inhabit ranges that in the summer are scorching hot with temperatures going well above 40 C. They can be thus found sleeping all day in cool rocky places preferably near rare water sources to expend as minimal energy as possible. During the cold season they are more active during the day and most likely that is when they cover the most ground. For example, crossing from Turkmenistan to Kazakhstan.
Leopards are very territorial animals, to the point where intraspecific killing is not uncommon, as seen with other big cats. Both male and female patrol their home ranges and communicate with each other through various marking behaviours to set territorial boundaries, and find mates, such as urine spraying, scraping, claw marking and leaving faeces. Young males often don’t leave scrapes, especially in areas claimed by other dominant males. The size of their home ranges is dependent on the availability of prey and how many other leopards are present. Studies from Iran show considerable variation with home ranges reaching up to 100 km2 on average. However young males, and Tay Sheri was one of them, can disperse far greater distances, in search of prey and mates.
Mating season is between January and March. At this time, leopards, normally very solitary creatures, come together for up to 7 days to mate. Three months later, cubs are born. Typically, a mother can have between one to three cubs, which are weaned after 100 days. Moms are fiercely protective of their cubs. For two years cubs will stay with their mom, learning from very early how to hunt and what to hunt. Around two years of age they will reach sexual maturity and continue the circle of mating and creating new life.
In Turkmenistan and Kazakhstan, Persian leopards’ diet includes urial sheep Ovis vignei, bezoar goat Capra aegagrus, wild boar Sus scrofa, goitered gazelle Gazella subgutturosa and porcupine Hystrix indica; they also feed on chukar Alectoris chukar, hare Lepus spp. and pika Ochotona rufescens.
However, it is their appetite for domestic livestock and dogs, especially in areas that are scarce in wild prey, that often puts them in direct conflict with people. That said many herders in Turkmenistan have a high tolerance for leopards. They recognize that losing sheep to leopards is “pay” - a share that they are willing to give them to graze their animals in areas that are the leopard’s home.
Despite a hunting ban in Turkmenistan, poaching is rampant. Hunters are quick at setting traps outside of protected areas once they know there is a leopard in the area. Leopard skins are offered for sale by word of mouth. Equally troubling is a thriving demand for the meat of urial and bezoar goat, the leopard’s key staple.
During the winter/spring of 2023 two leopards, a male and a female, were killed north of Badhyz in Turkmenistan, and in 2022 two more leopards are rumoured to have been killed between Balkanabat and the southern shore of Garabogaz gol.
A year after Tay Sheri died, in 2022, another leopard made its appearance in the Ustyurt Reserve in Kazakhstan. In the spring of 2023, a ranger of the Kyzylsay Regional Nature Park filmed on his phone a Persian leopard, possibly the same individual. Around that time, we received information that earlier in the winter a leopard crossed the Turkmenistan-Kazakhstan border a handful of kilometers west of the railroad that runs parallel to Garabogaz gol. Could have been the same individual as well? Or a second one?
To answer all these questions; in Kazakhstan, we partnered with the Biodiversity Research and Conservation Center (BRCC) and the Association for the Conservation of Biodiversity of Kazakhstan (ACBK) and several government partners including the Ustyurt Reserve, Kyzylsai Regional Nature Park and Kenderli Kaysan Reserve, the Beyneu and Mangistau environmental protection authorities and the Border Services of Kazakhstan; and in Turkmenistan with the Ministry of Environmental Protection; to launch a project supported by the National Geographic Society and Segre Foundation aimed at protecting the Balkan/Ustyrt, an extraordinary “forgotten” landscape, tackling the threats and improving coexistence.
By helping set up new protected areas (Uly and Kichi Balkan and an 1800 km2 wildlife sanctuary along Garabogaz-gol in Turkmenistan), strengthening existing ones (Ustyurt Reserve and Kyzylsai in Kazakhstan), working with herding communities and combatting poaching we hope to restore the ancient migrations of urial and gazelle and their top predator, the Persian leopard. Since existing border fences between Turkmenistan and Kazakhstan have severed connectivity for the urial and gazelle and made it more challenging for the leopard to cross, we hope that openings in the fence can be agreed upon to allow the movement of wildlife.
These landscapes are pounded by other threats as well. Climate change has visibly altered them: herders in both Turkmenistan and Kazakhstan complain that they don’t have enough water to sustain their herds. According to USAID, in 2021, 225 households in Mangistau, Kazakhstan suffered partial or total loss of livestock. In Turkmenistan, most of the proposed Ustyurt wildlife sanctuary is devoid of livestock, and it is not only a function of its remoteness but its lack of water. The lack of water makes the resilience and adaptability of wildlife even more exceptional.
Setting up a camera trap in Badkhiz. The camara trap footage is below. Photo: Atamurat Veyisov
Weli Nasyrow, deputy of the Balkan Department of Environment, opens the camera trap and hands me the flashcard which I quickly insert in my phone adapter. We walked down the steep escarpments (chinks) rising to 150 m over Garabogaz gol to check the cameras we set in April. My phone screen comes to life with images of inquisitive urials: moms and kids and a nice male from just a few days prior.
No leopard on cameras, but regardless an important sign that key prey is here. It is easy to follow their trails carved in the soil. The Ustyurt plateau, consists of an elevated ancient seabed with eroded hills and shallow basins, surrounded by the chinks. Permanent fresh surface water springs are rare and numerous shallow hyper saline water bodies of various sizes are scattered across the landscape. The trails lead to them. Animals congregate there. So do the poachers.
Eziz leads a team of 8 rangers responsible for patrolling 140,000 km2 which is an impossibly large landscape. For reference, protected areas in Central Asia will have roughly 10 rangers per 1000 km2. Establishing the 3 new protected areas - Uly Balkan as strict nature reserve and Kichi Balkan and Garabogaz-gol Ustyurt as wildlife sanctuaries – means adding at least 20 rangers that can significantly support existing antipoaching efforts as well as setting up stations in the field to facilitate protection work. The human capital coupled with the technology these days available to combat poaching, including using satelilite-linked camera traps like the Conservation X Labs Sentinels, can make an extraordinary difference.
As we drove, we stopped at one of many ancient burial grounds of the tribes that used to live on the Ustyurt. On one of them we found petroglyphs of urial, bezoar goat and saiga.
This landscape can come back to life again if protected.
As we leave the chinks, we run into two herders with their flocks of sheep and goats. Aknabat Potaeva, Science lead of the Kopetdag reserve, pulls out her booklet with images of the different wild cats found in Turkmenistan and starts quizzing one of the herders. One of them excitedly starts saying that he saw a leopard just a few days prior. The leopard took one of his sheep. He points to the southern shore of Garabogoz gol.
We drove there and walked looking for suitable places to place cameras. Stas Fateyew, who spent 40 years of his life working in the Kopetdag mountains surrounded by leopards, pointed to a track that looked like a striped hyena print. Saving Persian leopards, means saving many other species and ecosystems they depend upon. It also means saving people.
A group of camels with their slow gait, walks by. A herder on horseback waives hello.
There are moments when efforts to bring species back from the brink feel hopeless. Greed that feels unstoppable drives so much of their destruction. And then there are moments and encounters that show that there are still people out there who have figured out some rules of engagement with nature and shown that coexistence is possible.
Akmurad grazes his animals in the foothills of the Uly Balkan. Aknabat asks him if he is afraid of leopards. He said: “No. Persian leopards have long been here. They don’t harm people. My father taught me that when I go to a spring and meet a leopard, to say hello and introduce myself and tell him that I am here just to collect some water. The leopard will understand and leave. That’s what I do, I greet the leopard and he leaves.”
During the last few months, shortly after turning many of our camera traps on and leaving, a leopard came and sat staring at the camera as if to communicate something. We hope many return to the Ustyurt in both Turkmenistan and Kazakhstan.
