Cryptic Cats Link Hostile Governments
Posted by: Loren Coleman on June 20th, 2008
It appears that elusive felines are behind a new bridge being built between two hostile governments. The governments, you ask? That would be Iran and the USA.
Iran is believed to host the only 60 – 100 Asiatic cheetahs left in the wild. Some eke out a living in a forbidding terrain of jagged peaks, deep gorges and bone-dry plains in the Kuh-e Bafgh protected area in Yazd province in central Iran.
The sleek and spotted cats once roamed between the Arabian peninsula and India, but their number in Iran is estimated to have fallen by roughly half in the last three decades.
Kooshki, an Asiatic cheetah captured by a poacher as a cub and rescued by the Department of Environment, shown via these three photos, is in his enclosure at the Pardisan Zoo in Tehran on June 18, 2008.
Iranian and Western wildlife experts are working together to save rare cheetahs from extinction in this arid, mountainous region, despite a nuclear row between their governments.
For more see, here/Photos by Caren Firouz.
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Cool, I love how cheetahs look… What if animals in one country waged war on the same species of animals in another country?
Isn’t that what we are doing?? Who is the more intelligent animals??
man as just another animal, sometimes better, more often worse than those that walk on all-fours, who, because of his “divine spiritual and intellectual development,” has become the most vicious animal of all!
I’ve always been fascinated by the Asiatic cheetah. When people think of cheetahs, they always think of Africa, and very few even know that this type exists. Maybe this news will raise awareness of their plight. What a strikingly beautiful animal.
Do they glow in the dark?
Well, if these beautiful animals can help create bonds of cooperation between two enemy nations, the whole world will have much to thank them.
It seems to be more of a collaboration between “wildlife experts” from the two countries, rather than any high-level government initiatives. Unfortunately, regardless of their level of influence in certain areas of state policy, the wildlife experts generally are not the most “powerful” individuals in preventing decisions or actions (by either country) that may endanger the remaining Asiatic Cheetahs (as well as much more).